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ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

JUDAICA 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

JUDAICA 



SECOND EDITION 



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Blu-Cof 



Fred Skolnik, Editor in Chief 
Michael Berenbaum, Executive Editor 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Entries Blu-Cof 



5 



Abbreviations 
General Abbreviations 

787 

Abbreviations used in Rabbinical Literature 

788 

Bibliographical Abbreviations 

794 



Transliteration Rules 

807 

Glossary 
810 




The illuminated letter "B" at the beginning 
of the Psalms in Extracts from Gregory the 
Great shows King David playing his harp 
and the young David killing Goliath. N. 
France, 12 th century. Douai y Bibliotheque 
Municipale, ms. 3isA, vol. i,fol 5. 



Blu-Bz 



BLUESTONE, JOSEPH ISAAC (1860-1934), medical doc- 
tor and leading Zionist. Bluestone immigrated to the United 
States from Kalvarija, Lithuania, at the age of 19. He was a de- 
scendant of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann *Heller of Prague and 
Cracow, best known for his medieval commentary on the 
Mishnah (Tosefot Yom Tov). Bluestones basic Jewish educa- 
tion was classically Lithuanian/talmudic. 

Bluestone failed in his only attempt at business and so 
enrolled in medical school at New York University. He earned 
his degree in 1890 and opened his private medical practice on 
Manhattans Lower East Side. He was affiliated with Beth Israel 
Hospital and served on its staff. 

An ardent Zionist, and an American patriot, Bluestone 
supported settlement in Palestine and as early as 1882 urged 
the establishment of a Zionist society in New York. Within 
a year he was vice president of Hebra Hovovei Zion, urging 
economic, political, financial, and physical support of the Yi- 



shuv. In 1889, Bluestone became the editor of the first Zionist 
journal published in America, Schulamit. 

When the Federation of American Zionists was es- 
tablished in 1897, Bluestone joined its ranks, but was disil- 
lusioned when the organization ignored the Orthodox mem- 
bers of Hovevei Zion. To fill the needs of religious Zionists, 
he and Rabbi Philip Hillel *Klein established the Federa- 
tion of Zionist Organizations in the United States, an um- 
brella for Hovevei Zion groups. In 1901, he established the 
United Zionists of America, which essentially competed 
with the established community's Federation of American 
Zionists. The Federation served the West European, as- 
similated Jewish community, while Bluestones group was 
occupied mostly with Yiddish-speaking East. Europeans. It 
was only after Judah *Magnes took over the leadership of the 
American Zionists that Bluestone agreed to support their 
work. 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BLUHDORN, CHARLES G. 



One of Bluestone s major roles was to serve as a delegate 
to several international Zionist Congresses, where he met 
with Theodore *Herzl, Max *Nordau, Shmarya *Levin, and 
Rabbi Jacob Isaac *Reines. When the Mizrachi Organization 
of America was founded in 1912, Bluestone was one of its key 
leaders and served on the executive committee for many years. 
He edited its Hebrew-language newsletter Mizaracha, was a 
Hebrew poet in his own right, published in Ha-Maggid, Ha- 
Ivriy and Ha-Pisgah, and translated works from English and 
Yiddish into Hebrew. He was a friend of *Shalom Aleichem, 
*Imber, and *Goldfaden, all outstanding cultural figures from 
the Lower East Side. 

Bluestone was survived by four sons (all doctors) and 
three daughters. His self-written epitaph reads: "Here lies one 
who found a refuge at last - a Hebrew." 

bibliography: M. Sherman, Orthodox Judaism in America: 
A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook, (1996) 33-35; Letter to the 
Editor from David Bernard Ballin, in: The New York Times (Nov. 8, 
1 934)> 22 > Obituary, in: New York Times (Nov. 3, 1934); M. Feinstein, 
American Zionism 1881-1904 (1925), 20-21, 32-38, 126-27, 246-48; H. 
Grinstein: The Memoirs and Scrapbooks of the late Dr. Joseph Blue- 
stone of New York City, publications of the American Jewish Histori- 
cal Society 35 (1939), 53-64- 

[Jeanette Friedman (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUHDORN, CHARLES G. (1926-1983), U.S. empire 
builder. Born in Vienna, Bluhdorn emigrated to the United 
States in 1942. After service in the Army Air Force, he studied 
at the City College of New York and at Columbia University, 
but did not earn a degree. He began his career in a New York 
cotton -broke rage house, earning $15 a week. In 1949 he formed 
an import-export business that he operated until, at the age of 
30 and already a millionaire, he bought into a Grand Rapids, 
Michigan, auto-parts company. In 1958, after a merger with a 
Houston automotive-parts distributor, Gulf and Western In- 
dustries was formed. In its first year as G&W, it reported a net 
loss of $730 on sales of $8.4 million. A quarter-century later, 
after a spectacular chain of acquisitions and growth during the 
late 1960s and early 1970s, the multibillion- dollar conglomer- 
ate reported sales in 1982 of $5.3 billion and earnings of $199 
million. In 1982 the company employed more than 100,000 
people, primarily in the United States and in the Dominican 
Republic, where it had vast sugar holdings. Its corporate head- 
quarters became a prominent feature of the New York skyline, 
a 42-story office tower at Columbus Circle, off Central Park. 
Among its hundreds of subsidiaries were Paramount Pic- 
tures, the Madison Square Garden Corporation, and Simon 
& Schuster, the publisher. Bluhdorn, the company's founder, 
chairman, and chief executive, owned slightly more than 5 
percent of G&W's common stock. 

Bluhdorn was known among his employees as a remote, 
aloof executive, quick to criticize and hot-tempered. After 
Bluhdorns death, Gulf and Western sold off many of Bluh- 
dorns unrelated businesses, acquisitions, and investments, 
including sugar operations in the Dominican Republic. The 
company had been involved in the Dominican Republic since 



1967. In 1979 the Securities and Exchange sued the company, 
charging that Bluhdorn had made a secret agreement with 
high officials of the Dominican government to speculate in 
sugar. In 1981 the charges were withdrawn as part of a settle- 
ment agreement. 

Among the people Bluhdorn hired to run his various 
entertainment divisions were Barry *Diller, Michael *Eisner 
and Robert *Evans. Bluhdorn served as a trustee of Texas Wes- 
leyan College and the Trinity Episcopal Schools Corporation 
in New York and was active in a number of civic organizations. 
In 1977 Bluhdorn announced that G&W would buy the New 
York Cultural Center on Columbus Circle and give it to New 
York City, which it did in 1980. 

[Stewart Kampel (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUM, AMRAM BEN ISAAC JACOB (1834-1907), Hun- 
garian rabbi. He served as rabbi of the important commu- 
nities of Samson, Almas, Mad, Huszt, and Berettyoujfalu, 
where he died. He studied under his father, who was head of 
the bet din in Nagykaroly, and later in the seminaries of Na- 
gykaroly, and of Abraham Samuel Benjamin Sofer, rabbi of 
Pressburg. His sons relate that throughout his life he longed 
to stand at the threshold of the gates of Zion and Jerusalem. 
He decided to do so once he had married off his sons and 
daughters. However, he was never able to fulfill this desire. 
His work Beit Shear im (Orah Hayyim, 1909; Yoreh Deah, 
1941) is well-known in rabbinic circles and still of importance 
as a basic work of halakhah. The author formulated his own 
particular method of research, a method which went to the 
heart of each problem and explained it with clear reasoning. 
Blum founded a yeshivah which attracted many students. 
Blum had five sons and four sons-in-law, almost all of whom 
were noted scholars and served as rabbis of various commu- 
nities in Hungary and Transylvania. Prominent among his 
sons were isaac jacob (1858-1938) who succeeded his fa- 
ther; ben-zion (1885-1945), rabbi of Szarvas, who published 
his fathers book on the Passover Haggadah - Arvei Pesahim 
(1927); judah zevi (1867-1917), who served as rabbi of Ta- 
poly-Hanusfalva; and moses nahum, who held the position 
of dayyan of Nagyvarad. He met his death in Auschwitz in 
1944. Moses Nahum arranged the publication of the second 
volume of his fathers Beit Shear im. 

bibliography: N. Ben-Menahem, Mi-Sifrut Yisrael be-Un- 
garyah (1958), 306-9, 314-7; A.J. Schwartz, in: M. Stein, Even ha-Meir 
(1909), 83; P.Z. Schwartz, Shem ha-Gedolim me-Erez Hagar, 2 (1914), 
25a-b; S. Schwartz, Toledot Gebnei Hagar (1911), i5b-2oa; Magyar 
Zsido Lexikon (1929), 130. 

[Naphtali Ben-Menahem] 

BLUM, ELIEZER (pseudonym B. Alkvit; 1896-1963), Yid- 
dish poet and short story writer. After living in various Euro- 
pean cities, Blum went to New York in 1914. In 1920 he joined 
the introspective movement launched by the poets J. Glat- 
stein, A. *Glanz-Leyeles and N.B. Minkoff, and coedited its 
organ In-Zikh. He worked in a factory and was later associ- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BLUM, LEON 



ated with the Yiddish daily Jewish Morning Journal, in which 
he published lyrics, mostly in blank verse. His collection of 
short stories Oyfn Veg tsum Peretz Skver (1958; Revolt of the Ap- 
prentices and Other Stories, 1969), in common with his lyrics, 
combines realism and mysticism, an astonishing integration 
of the people and landscapes of his native Chelm and those of 
New York. The title story is itself the mystical contemplation 
of how a small square, bearing the name of Peretz, has some- 
how strayed into tumultuous New York. His collected poetry 
was published posthumously. 

bibliography: lnyl, s.v.; J. Glatstein, In Tokh Genumen 
(1956), 443-7; A. Glanz-Leyeles, Velt un Vort (1958), 162-5. 

[Melech Ravitch] 

BLUM, JEROME (1913- ), U.S. historian. Born in Baltimore, 
Maryland, Blum was associated with Princeton University 
from 1947, becoming professor of history in 1961. His main 
research was into agrarian structures and society in central 
and Eastern Europe. His Lord and Peasant in Russia, from the 
Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (1961) became the standard 
English work on the subject. Other books by Blum include No- 
ble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria: 1815-1848 (1948), 
The Emergence of the European World (1966), The European 
World since 1815: Triumph and Transition (1970), The End of the 
Old Order in Rural Europe (1978), Our Forgotten Past: Seven 
Centuries of Life on the Land (1982), and In the Beginning: The 
Advent of the Modern Age: Europe in the 1840s (1994). 

[Ruth Beloff (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUM, JULIUS (Blum Pasha; 1843-1919), Austro -Hungar- 
ian banker and Egyptian statesman. Blum, who was born in 
Budapest, worked for the Austrian Creditanstalt fuer Handel 
und Gewerbe, first in its Trieste branch, and, later, in its affiliate 
in Egypt. After the banks liquidation in Egypt, Blum served 
as undersecretary of finance (1877-90), and was instrumental 
in the rehabilitation of the country s economy, following the 
1875 financial collapse and the British occupation in 1882. In 
1890 he resigned his Egyptian post, with high honors, and re- 
joined the management of the Creditanstalt in Vienna where 
his knowledge of international finance contributed to making 
the bank a leading institution in Europe. From 1913 Blum was 
president of the Creditanstalt. 

bibliography: J.O. Ronall, in: Tradition: Zeitschrift fuer Fir- 
mengeschichte und Unternehmer-Biographie, no. 2 (1968), 57-80. 

[Joachim O. Ronall] 

BLUM, LEON (1872-1950), statesman; the first Jew and the 
first socialist to become premier of France. Son of a wealthy 
Alsatian merchant, Blum graduated with the highest honors 
in law at the Sorbonne. At the age of 22, he was recognized as 
a poet and writer. His publications included En lisant: reflex- 
ions critiques (1906), Au Theatre, 4 vols. (1905-11), and a book 
about Stendhal (1914). His Du Mariage (1907; Marriage, 1937) 
created a sensation because of its advocacy of trial marriage 



and was quoted against him years later when he was premier. 
Blum was also a brilliant literary and drama critic. Blum was 
appointed to the Conseil d'Etat, a body whose functions in- 
cluded the settlement of conflicts between administrative and 
judicial authorities. He rose to the high rank of "Master of Re- 
quests," one of the principal offices in the Conseil d'Etat. 

Always conscious of his Jewish origin, Blum was brought 
into active politics as a result of the *Dreyfus Affair. His close 
association with Jean Jaures, whom he greatly admired, led to 
his joining the Socialist Party in 1899. Blum was first elected 
to the Chamber of Deputies in 1919. When the party split in 
December 1920, and the Communist section won a majority, 
securing the party machine, funds, and press, Blum helped 
to reconstruct the Socialist Party so successfully that he is 
considered one of the founders of the modern French So- 
cialist Party. 

Blum led the opposition to the government of Mille- 
rand and Poincare and supported Herriot s Cartel de gauche 
in 1924. In the 1928 elections, the Socialist Party won 104 seats 
but Blum himself was defeated. A year later, however, he was 
elected for Narbonne, and was reelected for this department 
in 1932 and 1936. The 1934 Paris riots resulting from the dis- 
closures of the Stavisky financial scandal were an early por- 
tent of the danger of fascism, and Blum began to work for the 
left-wing alliance that became the Front Populaire. In 1936 
the Front won a large majority and Blum, its chief architect, 
became premier (on June 4). His government introduced the 
40-hour week, nationalized the Bank of France and the war 
industries, and carried out a far-reaching program of social 
reforms. The most difficult problem was that of national de- 
fense in the face of the growing power of the Rome-Berlin 
axis. However, in the face of the challenge of the Spanish Civil 
War, Blum, confronted with the negative attitude of the British 
Conservative government to the Republican Forces, decided 
on a policy of "nonintervention" which was described by his 
critics as appeasement of the Axis powers. At the same time 
his social reforms aroused the bitterness of industrialists who 
openly refused to cooperate with the government. The right 
wing, which showed pro -German tendencies, conducted a vio- 
lent campaign of personal vilification against Blum tinged with 
antisemitic undertones. In 1937, on June 21, Blum resigned, af- 
ter parliament had refused to grant him emergency powers 
to deal with the country's financial problems. He served as 
vice premier in modified Popular Front governments and as 
premier again, for less than a month, in 1938, during the Nazi 
invasion of Austria. After the French collapse in 1940, he was 
indicted by the Vichy government on charges of war guilt and 
was brought to trial. His brilliant defense confounded the Ger- 
mans as well as the "men of Vichy" and the former ordered 
the suspension of the trial. Blum was returned to prison and 
was freed from a German concentration camp by U.S. forces 
in May 1945. He was given an enthusiastic welcome both in 
France and in international labor circles. 

After the liberation of France, he emerged as an elder 
statesman and negotiated the vast U.S. credit to France. In 1946 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



7 



BLUM, LUDWIG 



he formed an all-Socialist "caretaker" government, whose vig- 
orous policy left a deep impression even though it only sur- 
vived for a month. Blum then retired from public life, except 
for a brief period as vice premier in a 1948 government. He is 
considered one of the great figures in the French Labor move- 
ment and an architect of the Socialist International between 
the two world wars. 

Sympathetic to Zionist aspirations, Leon Blum, together 
with Emile Vandervelde, Arthur Henderson, and Eduard Ber- 
nstein, was one of the founders of the "Socialist Pro-Palestine 
Committee >> in 1928. He readily accepted Weizmann's invi- 
tation to join the enlarged Jewish Agency and addressed its 
first meeting in Zurich in 1929. Blum took a leading part in 
influencing the French governments pro-Jewish vote on the 
un decision on Palestine in 1947. He was also instrumental in 
preventing British diplomatic pressure from stopping the flow 
of Jewish ^"illegal" immigration from Central Europe through 
France to Palestine. 

His son Robert leon (1902-1975) was an engineer and 
industrialist. Born in Paris, he studied engineering at the Ecole 
Superieure Polytechnique. In 1926 he joined Hispano-Suiza, 
manufacturers of automobiles and aircraft engines. In 1968 he 
retired as president of the company. Robert Leon also served 
as president of Bugatti, another automobile manufacturing 
firm. He was president of the Union Syndicate des Industries 
Aeronautiques et Spatiales in 1967-68, president of the French 
Association of Aeronautics and Space Engineers from 1963 to 
1972, and chairman of the French Aeronautics and Astronau- 
tics Federation in 1972-73. 

bibliography: J. Colton, Leon Blum: Humanist in Politics 
(1966); L.E. Dalby, Leon Blum: Evolution of a Socialist (1963); J. Jo 11, 
Three Intellectuals in Politics (i960); Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, 
Leon Blum (1962); Leon Blum before his judges (1943); J. Moch, Rencon- 
tres avec... Leon Blum (1970). add. bibliography: J. Colton, Leon 
Blum, Humanist in Politics (1966); W. Logue, Leon Blum: The Forma- 
tive Years, 18/2-1914 (1973); J. Lacouture, Leon Blum (Eng.,1982); I. 

Greilsammer, Blum (Fr., 1996). 

[Moshe Rosetti] 

BLUM, LUDWIG (1891-1974), Israel painter. Born in Mora- 
via, Blum studied art at the Royal Academy in Vienna at 1910 
and later on joined the Austrian army during World War 1. 
In 1919-1920 he was at the Academy of Prague and then went 
on to advanced studies in Amsterdam, Paris, London and 
Madrid (1920-23). He immigrated to Palestine in 1923 and 
settled in Jerusalem. He lost his son in 1946 during a Palmah 
action. In 1949 he was one of the founders of the first Artists' 
House in Jerusalem. Blums work has four distinct periods: 
the first focused on the search for a decisive style; the second 
began with his arrival in Jerusalem and includes portraits, 
landscapes, and still lifes that are executed in a dry and natu- 
ralistic manner; the third began after his son fell and depicts 
fighting men during the War of Independence; the fourth 
began after the establishment of the state and includes views 
from all over the country. In 1968 he received the honorary 
reward of "Yakir Yerushalayim" for his artistic tribute to the 



city. His works are found in museums and private collections 
all around the world. 

website: www.mayanotgallery.com. 

[Shaked Gilboa (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUM, RENE (1878-1944), French ballet impresario. A 
brother of the statesman Leon *Blum, Rene Blum began his 
career as a writer and was general secretary of the periodical 
Gil Blas y but gave up writing for art and ballet. When Diaghi- 
lev died (1929), Blum was chosen to succeed him as director 
of the Ballet de FOpera de Monte Carlo, and he held the post 
until the Nazi invasion of France in 1940. He was also asso- 
ciated for four years, from 1932, with Colonel de Basils Bal- 
let. In 1936 he founded the Rene Blum Ballets Russes and two 
years later, joined by Leonide Massine and other members of 
the de Basil company, he formed the Ballets Russes de Monte 
Carlo. After the German occupation of Paris, Blum refused 
to leave for the free zone of France, and at the end of 1941 was 
interned with nearly a thousand French -Jewish intellectuals 
in the camp of Compiegne. From there he was sent to Aus- 
chwitz, where he died in September 1944. The manuscript of 
his memoirs, which was in the hands of a Paris publisher in 
1940, was not recovered after the liberation. 

bibliography: I. Guest, The Dancers Heritage (i960), 93ft.; 
S. Lifar, Histoire du Ballet Russe (1950), 245, 249. 

BLUM, WALTER ("Mousy"; 1934- ), racing jockey; the only 
Jewish rider to have earned a spot in the Racing Hall of Fame 
in Saratoga Springs, n.y. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to a 
newspaper delivery man, Blum took to riding early, shining 
shoes in order to afford trips to the horse stables. He dropped 
out of high school to go work for trainer Hirsch Jacobs at age 
16 as a horse walker. At 18, he rode his first mount, Ricey, on 
May 4, 1953, and his first winner, Tuscania, on his 14 th ride at 
Saratoga, n.y., on July 29, 1953. Over a 22-year career from 1953 
to 1975 spent mostly in New York and later in Florida, Blum 
rode in 28,673 races and won 4,382, for a winning percentage 
of 15.3 percent. Among his more famous horses were Royal 
Beacon, his first $100,000 stakes victory in the 1957 Atlantic 
City Handicap; Pass Catcher, with whom he dashed the Triple 
Crown hopes of Canonero 11 by winning the 103 rd Belmont 
in 2:30.6 on June 5, 1971; Summer Scandal; Boldnesian; Gun 
Bow; Mr. Prospector; the filly Priceless Gem, with whom he 
beat Horse of the Year Buckpasser in the Aqueduct Futurity 
in 1965; Lady Pitt; and Affectionately, whom he considered his 
best mount. Blums best day was June 19, 1961, when he won 
six of eight races at Monmouth Park. He was national riding 
champion in 1963 with 360 wins in 1,704 races, and again in 
1964 with 324 wins. One of his most exciting races was a photo 
finish with Gun Bow over Kelso in the 1964 Woodward Stakes. 
In 1974 Blum became the sixth jockey to ride 4,000 winners, 
and upon his retirement only four other jockeys - Bill Shoe- 
maker, John Longden, Eddie Arcaro, and Steve Brooks - had 
won more races. Blum later worked as a racing official, and 
also served as president of the Jockeys' Guild in the early 1970s. 



8 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BLUMEL, ANDRE 



Blum won the George Woolf Memorial Award in 1965, pre- 
sented to the jockey whose career had brought credit to his 
profession, and was inducted into the National Horse Racing 

Hall of Fame in 1987. 

[Elli Wohlgelernter (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUMBERG, BARUCH SAMUEL (1925- ), U.S. physician 
and Nobel laureate. Blumberg was born in New York City and 
received his elementary schooling at the Flatbush Yeshiva. Af- 
ter high school he joined the U.S. Navy in 1943 and finished 
college (B.Sc. in physics from Union College) while enlisted. 
He received his M.D. from Columbia University in 1951. From 
1951 to 1953 he was an intern and resident at Bellevue Hospi- 
tal in New York City; the next two years were spent as a clini- 
cal fellow in medicine at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical 
Center's Arthritis Division. From 1955 to 1957 he was a gradu- 
ate student at the Department of Biochemistry at Oxford Uni- 
versity, England, and a member of Balliol College, where he 
received his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1957. That year he joined 
the National Institutes of Health, where he remained until 
1964, when he joined the Fox Chase Cancer Center, serving 
as assistant director of Clinical Research. At the same time he 
was appointed professor of medicine and anthropology at the 
University of Pennsylvania, where, in 1970, he was appointed 
professor of medicine and medical genetics. In 1989 he be- 
came master of Balliol College at Oxford while maintaining 
a position at Fox Chase Cancer Center. He stayed at Oxford 
until 1994. From 1999 until 2002 he was director of the nasa 
Astrobiology Institute at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, 
California. In 2000-01 he was senior advisor to the adminis- 
trator of nasa in Washington, d.c. 

Blumberg was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in medicine 
and physiology for "discoveries concerning new mechanisms 
for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases." The 
award was based mainly on Blumbergs 1963 discovery of an 
antigen that detected the presence of hepatitis b and his sub- 
sequent research, with microbiologist Irving Millman, which 
led to a test for hepatitis viruses in donated blood and to an 
experimental vaccine against the disease. The two were elected 
to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1993. 

Blumbergs far-ranging research interests include epi- 
demiology, virology, genetics, and anthropology. From 1959 
to 1963 he was assistant editor of the periodical Arthritis and 
Rheumatism and in 1963 became editor of Progress in Rheu- 
matology. 

[Ruth Rossing (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUME, PETER (1906-1992), U.S. painter and sculptor. The 
Russian-born Blume immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, in 
1911 with his family. He studied art in several institutions, most 
notably beginning his art training at the age of 13 at the Edu- 
cational Alliance. There his classmates included Moses *Soyer 
and Chaim *Gross. Blume s early work was shown at the Dan- 
iel Gallery, one of the most progressive venues in New York. 
The imagery from this period, mostly landscapes and still lifes, 



was influenced by Precisionism, an American art movement 
defined by a sharply delineated technique. 

His highly stylized work combined fantasy elements with 
depictions of modern life. In South of Scranton (1931), precise, 
miniature, i5 th -century technique was employed to create a 
20 th -century image of German soldiers exercising on the deck 
of a ship at the quaint town of Charleston, South Carolina. His 
largest picture to date, the painting won first prize at the 1934 
Carnegie International Exhibition, making Blume the young- 
est painter to have earned that distinction. 

After spending 1932 in Italy on a Guggenheim grant, he 
worked for three years on The Eternal City (1934-37), now 
owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Amid 
the ruins of Rome, Blume portrays Mussolini as an enormous 
green jack-in-the-box in the Roman Forum. This large, crisply 
rendered canvas garnered mixed reviews because of its con- 
troversial, propagandistic subject. During the late 1930s he 
produced three murals of the American scene under the aus- 
pices of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Ad- 
ministration. Barns (1937), Vineyard (1942), and Two Rivers 
(1942) were painted for post offices in Cannonsburg, Penn- 
sylvania, Geneva, New York, and Rome, Georgia, respec- 
tively. His work showed widely during the Great Depression, 
including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at 
an exhibition sponsored by the World Alliance or Yiddish 
Culture (ykuf). 

While uninterested in subjects of a religious Jewish na- 
ture, Blume did paint Christian imagery. After a 1949 trip to 
Mexico, Blume painted The Shrine (1950), Crucifixion (1951), 
and Man of Sorrows (1951), the latter of which is in the Whit- 
ney Museum of American Art. 

In 1972, Blume briefly changed mediums and produced a 
sculpture series, Bronzes About Venus. Comprised of 17 sculp- 
tures on the theme of the goddess of beauty and pleasure, 10 
large and 17 smaller pieces were initially modeled in wax and 
then cast in bronze. 

bibliography: P. Blume, Peter Blume in Retrospect (1964); 
F. Trapp, Peter Blume (1987). 

[Samantha Baskind (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUMEL, ANDRE (1893-1973), French Zionist leader. Blu- 
mels original name was Blum, but he changed it on his ap- 
pointment as chef de cabinet in the government of his name- 
sake, Leon *Blum (1936-37). Born in Paris, he studied law and 
literature at the Sorbonne. He was active from his youth in the 
Socialist movement, where he was influenced by Leon Blum 
and formed a close relationship with him, but he took no in- 
terest in Jewish affairs until after World War 11. During the 
war he was arrested by the Vichy government, but succeeded 
in escaping and making his way to Spain. 

After the liberation of France, under the influence of 
Joseph (Fisher) Ariel, Blumel became interested in Zionism 
and was appointed president of the Keren Kayemet in France. 
As a result of his many connections with the Ministry of the 
Interior, he was able to be of great help in the *Berihah and 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BLUMENBERG, LEOPOLD 



"illegal" immigration of Jews via France, His friend Edouard 
Depreux, whom he served as chef de cabinet when the latter 
was minister of the interior, nominated him as his personal 
representative in Marseilles when the immigrant boat Exo- 
dus anchored at Port de Bouc, and it was due to his efforts 
that the French Government refused to disembark the pas- 
sengers by force, despite pressure by the Foreign Ministry. 
Together with Marc *Jarblum, he acted as liaison between 
Chaim *Weizmann and Leon Blum in the struggle for the 
emergence of the State. 

Blumel became secretary general and subsequently presi- 
dent of the French Zionist Federation in the 1950s, but differ- 
ences of opinion developed between him and the Zionist par- 
ties as a result of his leftist tendencies in the internal politics 
of the country. He remained in close contact with the com- 
munists even when they adopted an extreme anti-Zionist 
policy, in the belief that he would persuade them to adopt a 
more favorable attitude to Zionism and Israel. Lacking a Jew- 
ish background, and out of tune with the Jewish masses, he 
regarded the relationship between Zionists and Jewish com- 
munists as comparable to those between political parties in 
France, and believed that reconciliation and cooperation was 
possible between them. Widespread criticism of his articles 
in the Jewish communist press caused him to resign from the 
Zionist Federation. 

Blumel was president of the U.S.S.R. -France Friendship 
League and paid a number of visits to Moscow and other com- 
munist countries at their invitation. Although he tried to in- 
tervene with their governments, especially that of the U.S.S.R., 
on the Jewish question, he was easily convinced by them, and 
his many statements to the effect that there was no anti -Jewish 
discrimination in the U.S.S.R. and that Jews had no need for 
Jewish education roused the anger of Jewish leaders in France. 
Despite the fact that none of the promises made to him by the 
Soviet authorities were implemented, he continued to believe 
in their goodwill. 

Apart from serving as legal adviser to the Israel Embassy 
and the Jewish Agency in France, Blumel took no further ac- 
tive part in Jewish life, and after the Six-Day War published 
articles vehemently attacking the policy of the Israel govern- 
ment. Although out of line in Jewish communal life, the im- 
portant part that he played in the Exodus affair and the fact 
that he was the first to attract the old French Jews to Zionism 

are to his credit. 

[Jacob Tsur] 

BLUMENBERG, LEOPOLD (1827-1876), U.S. business- 
man and soldier. Born in Brandenburg, Prussia, Blumenberg 
served as a lieutenant in the fighting in Denmark in 1848. He 
emigrated to the United States in 1854 and developed a suc- 
cessful business in Baltimore. At the beginning of the Ameri- 
can Civil War, he helped organize a Unionist Maryland Vol- 
unteer regiment, fought with it in the Peninsula Campaign, 
and was severely wounded while commanding the unit in 
the Battle of Antietam (1862). Incapacitated by his wounds, 



he was appointed provost marshal of the third Maryland dis- 
trict and later attained the rank of brevet brigadier general of 
U.S. Volunteers. 



95 



bibliography: J. BenHirsh,/eiWs/z General Officers, 1 (1967), 

[Stanley L. Falk] 



BLUMENFELD, EMANUEL (1801-1878), leader of the Has- 
kalah in Galicia and the first Jew to practice law in Lemberg. 
Blumenfeld was instrumental in establishing the Reform 
Temple in Lemberg. He was a member of an unsuccessful 
delegation sent to the Austrian emperor in 1840 to ask for 
abolition of the *candle tax and for alleviation of the restric- 
tion on Jewish occupations. In 1842 the authorities, wishing 
to encourage the spread of Haskalah, appointed a community 
council without holding elections, which Blumenfeld headed. 
He subsequently reorganized the communal administration 
and inaugurated wide-ranging educational projects. A secular 
coeducational Jewish school on the model of the Perl school 
in Tarnopol was opened in Lemberg in 1844, and supported 
by the community. In 1847 Blumenfeld convened an assem- 
bly of representatives of the communities of Galicia to dis- 
cuss alleviation of taxation and the general situation. He was 
one of the eight Jews elected to the city council for the first 
time in 1848, and helped to formulate the municipal statute 
of Lemberg in 1850. 

bibliography: E Friedman, Die galizischen Juden im Kampfe 
um ihre Gleichberechtigung (1929), 58 n. 146; N.M. Gelber, in: eg, Po- 
land series, 4 (1956), 232-3. 

[Moshe Landau] 

BLUMENFELD, FELIX MIKHAYLOVICH (1863-1931), 
conductor, pianist, teacher, and composer. Born in Kovalovka, 
Kherson, Blumenfeld studied at the St. Petersburg Conserva- 
tory with Stein (piano) and Rimsky-Korsakov (composition). 
After his graduation in 1885 he taught piano and was ap- 
pointed professor in 1897. Blumenfeld conducted at the Im- 
perial Opera, 1898-1912, gave the first performance of Rim- 
sky- Korsakov's Servilia (1902) and of The Legend of the Invis- 
ible City ofKitezh (1907), and conducted the Russian seasons 
in Paris in 1908 (including Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov). 
After the Revolution, he became director of the Kiev Con- 
servatory, and in 1922 joined the Moscow Conservatory as 
a piano teacher. He composed piano music, chamber music, 
and songs. 

bibliography: "EM. Blumenfel'da" in: Sovetskaya muzyka, 

4 (1963), 74-6; L. Barenboim, Fortepianno-pedagogicheskie prinzipy 

EM. BlunefeVda (1964]. 

[Marina Rizarev (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUMENFELD, HERMANN FADEEVICH (1861-1920), 
Russian civil lawyer. He was the son of Rabbi Feitel Blumen- 
feld of Kherson (1826-1896), who helped to develop the Jew- 
ish agricultural colonies in Kherson and Bessarabia. Blumen- 
feld won a gold medal at the University of Odessa for a thesis 
on the law of real property. Being a Jew, however, he was 



10 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BLUMENKRANZ, BERNHARD 



not allowed to be called to the bar and remained formally 
an articled clerk until 1905 (the formal title in Russian was 
"assistant lawyer"). In the trials of 1906 following the Kishinev 
pogroms, the memorandum of the bar association submit- 
ted to the minister of justice was based on a report drafted by 
Blumenfeld. In the regime of Alexander Kerensky follow- 
ing the February revolution of 1917, Blumenfeld was made 
a member of the supreme court. His writings include two 
books on forms of land ownership in ancient Russia (1884), 
and on inheritance and authors' rights (1892), and articles 
on Jewish subjects, including "Economic Activity of the Jews 
in Southern Russia," in Voskhod (no. 9, (1881), 175-219), and 
"Jewish Colonies in the Kherson Government," in Razsvet 
(1880 and 1881). 

[David Bar-Rav-Hay] 

BLUMENFELD, KURT YEHUDAH (1884-1963), German 
Zionist leader. Blumenfeld, who was born in Treuberg, East 
Prussia, studied law at the universities of Berlin, Freiburg, and 
Koenigsberg. He joined the Zionist movement in 1904 while 
still a student and became a student leader of the movement. 
From 1910 to 1914 he directed the department of information 
of the World Zionist executive, whose seat was then in Berlin, 
visiting many countries in the course of his work. In 1913-14 
he was the editor of Die Welt, and in 1920 was among the 
founders of Keren Hayesod. He was president of the German 
Zionist Federation from 1923 to 1933. Blumenfeld settled in 
Jerusalem in 1933 and became a member of the Keren Haye- 
sod directorate. He was a delegate to every Zionist Congress 
from the ninth (1909) on, and was a member of the Zionist 
General Council from 1920. 

During World War 11 Blumenfeld stayed in the U.S., 
where he was occupied with Zionist politics. In 1946 he moved 
back to Jerusalem. His influence on West European person- 
alities, including Albert Einstein, derived primarily from his 
intellectualism and his specific "post- assimilation" Zionism, 
i.e., the Zionist ideology he evolved to appeal to Jews who were 
already assimilated. Blumenfeld was in many ways a repre- 
sentative of the "post-assimilation" generation. His memoirs, 
Erlebte Judenfrage; ein Viertelj ahrhundert deutscher Zionismus 
(1962), have been translated into Hebrew. 

bibliography: S. Esh, in: jjso, 6 (1964), 232-42; Y.K. Blu- 
menfeld in Memoriam (1964); Davar (April 25, 1962); mb (May 29, 
1964). add. bibliography: J. Hackeschmidt, Von Kurt Blumen- 
feld zu Norbert Elias (1997) 

[Alexander Bein / Noam Zadoff (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUMENFELD, RALPH DAVID (1864-1948), British jour- 
nalist. Blumenfeld was born in Wisconsin, the son of a news- 
paperman. He became a reporter on the Chicago Herald and 
later on the New York Herald. In New York, he entered the 
typesetting business, sold linotype machines in England, and 
made a considerable fortune. At the age of 36 he reentered 
journalism as news editor of the London Daily Mail and trans- 
ferred to The Daily Express as foreign editor in 1902. After 



becoming a British subject in 1907, he was editor, 1904-1932, 
editor in chief from 1924, and chairman of the London Ex- 
press Newspaper Company, 1915-1948. Blumenfeld edited 
The Daily Express for mass appeal, used large type in force- 
ful style, stressed the "human angle" wherever possible, ran 
the paper as a pro-Conservative, pro-tariff reform daily, and 
raised the papers circulation to two million a day. After his 
retirement in 1932, he visited Palestine, became a supporter 
of Zionism, and was active against antisemitism. Among the 
books he published were R.D.B.'s Diary 1887-1914 (1930), All 
in a Lifetime (1931), The Press in My Time (1933), and R.D.B.'s 
Procession (1935). 

add. bibliography: D. Griffiths (ed.), Encyclopedia of the 
British Press, 1422-1992 (1992), 116-17; odnb online. 

BLUMENFELD, WALTER (1882-1967), German psycholo- 
gist. Born in Neuruppin, Silesia, Blumenfeld became profes- 
sor at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. Leaving Ger- 
many in 1936, he was appointed professor at the University of 
San Marcos, Lima, Peru, and director of the Institute of Psy- 
chopedagogy. He became known for the "Blumenfeld alleys," 
an apparatus he invented to measure the perceptual relation- 
ship between size and distance. 

BLUMENFIELD, SAMUEL (1901-1972), U.S. Jewish edu- 
cator. Born in Letichev, Russia, Blumenfield was superinten- 
dent of the Chicago Board of Jewish Education until 1954, and 
also headed Chicago's College of Jewish Studies as dean, and 
later as president. From 1954 until his retirement in 1968, he 
served as director of the Department of Education and Cul- 
ture of the Jewish Agency (American Section). Blumenfield 
is author of Master of Troyes - A Study of Rashi the Educa- 
tor (1946), "Towards a Study of Maimonides the Educator" 
(huca, 23 (1950-51), 555-91), and Hevrah ve-Hinnukh be- 
Yahadut Amerikah (1965). He was president of Avukah (an 
American student Zionist organization) and the National 

Council of Jewish Education. 

[Leon H. Spotts] 

BLUMENKRANZ, BERNHARD (1913-1989), historian. Blu- 
menkranz headed a research unit at the National Center for 
Scientific Research (Paris), and lectured on the social history 
of the Jews at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. 
He was president of the French Commission of Jewish Ar- 
chives, and director of the bimonthly publication of the Jew- 
ish Archives. His works deal principally with the Jewish and 
Christian relations in the Middle Ages and the history of the 
Jews in medieval France. Among his books are Juifs et Chre- 
tiens dans le monde occidental (i960), Les auteurs chretiens 
latins du Moyen-Age sur les Juifs et le juda'isme (1963), and Le 
Juif medieval au miroir de Vart chretien (1966). Blumenkranz 
was a departmental editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (first 
edition) for the Church and the Jews and the history of the 

Jews in Medieval France. 

[Colette Sirat] 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



11 



BLUMENTHAL, AARON H. 



BLUMENTHAL, AARON H. (1908-1982), U.S. Conserva- 
tive rabbi. Blumenthal was born in Montreal, Canada, and re- 
ceived his ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 
1932. He served as a chaplain during World War 11, eventually 
becoming head of the Chaplaincy Commission of the Jewish 
Welfare Board. Most of BlumenthaPs rabbinic career (1946-73) 
was spent as spiritual leader of Congregation Emanuel, Mount 
Vernon, n.y., where he was an outspoken advocate of civil 
rights and busing. For more than three decades (1948-82), 
Blumenthal was a leading member of the Committee on Jew- 
ish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, writing 
many halakhic responsa for the Conservative movement. He 
was also known for his minority opinions, which early on fa- 
vored equality for women in being called to the Torah (ali- 
yot), counted towards a minyan, and ordained as rabbis. Blu- 
menthal was elected president of the Rabbinical Assembly in 
1956. He wrote two books: If I Am Not for Myself: The Story of 
Hillel (1973) and And Bring Them Closer to Torah (published 
posthumously in 1986) edited by his son david (1938- ), also 
a Conservative rabbi and a distinguished scholar at Emory 
University, who has written on post-Holocaust theology and 
ethics in such works as Facing the Abusing God (1993) and The 
Banality of Good and Evil: Moral Lessons from the Shoah and 
Jewish Tradition (1999). 

bibliography: RS. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: 
A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1988). 

[Bezalel Gordon (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUMENTHAL, GEORGE (1858-1941), U.S. banker, phi- 
lanthropist, and patron of the arts. He was born in Frankfurt 
and worked there in the banking house of Speyer. After mov- 
ing to the United States in 1882, he became senior partner of 
Lazard Freres and director of various banks and insurance 
companies. In 1898 he joined other bankers in raising a fund 
of $50 million to stop the flow of gold from the United States, 
and after World War 1, played an important part in stabiliz- 
ing the franc. 

Blumenthal was director and president of the Mount 
Sinai Hospital, the largest Jewish hospital in New York. He do- 
nated one million dollars to the hospital and a new wing was 
erected as a memorial to his son. He was active in support of 
the arts, giving a million dollars to the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art in New York, of which he became president in 1934. In 
1937 he presented a collection of first editions of important 
French writers to the New York Public Library. 

BLUMENTHAL, JOSEPH (1834-1901), U.S. businessman 
and a founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Blumen- 
thal, who was born in Munich, was taken to the U.S. at the age 
of five. He was a member of the Committee of Seventy which 
was responsible for the downfall of the notorious Tweed Ring. 
He served as New York State assemblyman and as commis- 
sioner of taxes and assessments in New York City. Blumenthal 
served in Jewish communal affairs as president of Shearith 



Israel Synagogue, president of the Young Men's Hebrew Asso- 
ciation, and a leader of B'nai Brim. He was the first president 
of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a 
position he held from its inception in 1886 until his death. 

bibliography: M. Davis, Emergence of Conservative Juda- 
ism (1963), 331-2. 

[Jack Reimer] 

BLUMENTHAL, JOSEPH (1897-1990), U.S. printer and type 
designer. Born in New York, Blumenthal founded the Spiral 
Press in New York City in 1926. For more than 50 years it was 
acknowledged as producing the finest in American printing, 
setting standards for dedication to detail and design. 

Blumenthal designed his own typeface, Emerson, which 
was available for hand and machine setting for commercial 
book composition. At the modern, well-equipped but small 
Spiral Press, Blumenthal designed and produced books and 
exhibition catalogs for such institutions as the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Pierpont 
Morgan Library, the Grolier Club, and the American Acad- 
emy of Arts and Letters, as well as limited editions such as 
Ben *Shahns Alphabet of Creation for general book publishers. 
He also designed and printed the books of such luminaries as 
Robert Frost, WH. Auden, Pablo Neruda, William Carlos Wil- 
liams, Robinson Jeffers, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

In 1952 Blumenthal was awarded a medal by the Ameri- 
can Institute of Graphic Arts. In his later years he prepared a 
series of exhibitions on fine printing in America and Europe. 
He also wrote and taught, sharing his lifelong passion for the 
book, which he regarded as the vehicle for cultural heritage. 

In his illustrated autobiography, Typographic Years: A 
Printers Journey Through a Half Century 1925-1975-, written 
in 1982, Blumenthal presents a vivid account of his life in the 
realm of fine printing from a personal, professional, and his- 
torical perspective. Other books by Blumenthal include The 
Spiral Press through Four Decades, an Exhibition of Books and 
Ephemera (1966), The Printed Book in America (1977), Art 
of the Printed Book, 1455-1955: Masterpieces of Typography 
through Five Centuries from the Collections of the Pierpont 
Morgan Library, New York (1974), Robert Frost and His Printers 
(1985), and Bruce Rogers: A Life in Letters, 18/0-195/ (1989). 

add. bibliography: P.N. Cronenwett, The Spiral Press, 
1926-19/1: A Bibliographical Checklist (2002). 

[Israel Soifer / Ruth BelofT (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUMENTHAL, NISSAN (1805-1903), Russian cantor. 
Blumenthal was born in Berdichev, Ukraine, where he be- 
came cantor at the age of 21. He later served in Yekaterino- 
slav (Dnepropetrovsk), and from 1841 until his death held the 
position of chief cantor at the Brody Synagogue in Odessa. 
His main contribution to the music of the synagogue was the 
founding of a choir school in Odessa, where he developed cho- 
ral singing in four voices, an innovation at that time. Contrary 
to the wishes of the traditionalists, he introduced into the lit- 



12 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



b'nai b'rith 



urgy melodies from German classical music. He was neverthe- 
less a lover of tradition and succeeded in effecting a synthesis 
of old and new. Few of his melodies appeared in print, but they 
were preserved by other cantors and some are still sung. 

bibliography: Sendrey, Music, indexes; A.L. Holde, Jews in 
Music (1959), index; H.H. Harris, Toledot ha-Neginah ve-ha-Hazzanut 
be-Yisrael (1950), 400-2. 

[Joshua Leib Ne'eman] 

BLUMENTHAL, OSKAR (1852-1917), German playwright 
and literary critic. Born in Berlin to an Orthodox family, he 
finished his studies in philology and literary history in 1875. 
He started his career as a journalist and achieved early notori- 
ety as "Bloody Oskar" for his satirical articles as theater critic 
of the Berliner Tageblatt. From 1876 he started writing come- 
dies. In 1888 he helped to found the Lessing Theater in Berlin 
and directed many of its productions until 1897. Blumenthais 
plays attacking social foibles were popular for about three de- 
cades and in the 1910 season several of his plays were widely 
performed. The witty comedy Der Probepfeil (1884) was often 
performed in America from 1892 onward as The Test Case. His 
greatest success was Im Weissen Roessl (1898), which he wrote 
in collaboration with Gustav Kadelburg. Transformed into a 
musical comedy, White Horse Inn (1907), it became an inter- 
national triumph of the mid- 1930s. 

add. bibliography: J. Wilcke, Das Lessingtheater unter 
O.B. 1881-98 (1958). 

[Sol Liptzin / Noam ZadofT (2 nd ed.)] 

BLUMENTHAL, WERNER MICHAEL (1926- ), U.S. econ- 
omist, industrialist, and ambassador. Born in Oranienburg, 
Germany, Blumenthal left Germany in the 1930s, spent some 
years in Shanghai where he was interned by the Japanese, and 
finally went to the United States in 1947. He taught at Prince- 
ton from 1954 to 1957, leaving to assume the post of vice pres- 
ident of Crown Cork International. In 1961 Blumenthal be- 
came United States representative to the un Commission 
on International Commodity Trade, serving simultaneously 
as deputy assistant secretary of state for economic affairs. In 
1963, as President Johnsons deputy special representative for 
trade negotiations, he was posted to Geneva as ambassador 
and chairman of the United States delegation to the Kennedy 
Round of tariff negotiations. After these were completed in 
1967, Blumenthal resigned from government service to be- 
come president of international operations at Bendix Corpora- 
tion. Blumenthal became chairman of the Bendix Corporation 
in 1972. He served as secretary of the treasury in the Carter 
Administration from 1977 until July 1979. 

Blumenthal was a member of the American Economic 
Association and the Council on Foreign Relations. 

In 1997 he became president and chief executive of the 
Berlin Jewish Museum. In 2002 Blumenthal, as director-gen- 
eral of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, was honored with the 
Goethe Institutes Goethe Medal, which is recognized as an of- 



ficial order by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is awarded 
to foreign citizens who have rendered outstanding service to 
the aims of the institute. 

[Ellen Friedman / Ruth BelorT (2 nd ed)] 

B'NAI B'RITH, international Jewish organization commit- 
ted to the security and continuity of the Jewish people and 
the State of Israel; defending human rights; combating anti- 
semitism, bigotry, and ignorance; and providing services to 
the community on the broadest principles of humanity. Its 
mission is to unite persons of the Jewish faith and to enhance 
Jewish identity through strengthening Jewish family life and 
the education and training of youth; broad-based services for 
the benefit of senior citizens; and advocacy and action on be- 
half of Jews throughout the world. 

Although the organizations historic roots are in a sys- 
tem of fraternal lodges and units (chapters), in the late 20 th 
century, as fraternal organizations were in decline through- 
out the U.S., the organization began evolving into a dual sys- 
tem of the traditional payment of dues, with an expectation of 
active participation, and the pattern more common to other 
contemporary organizations - affiliation by contribution. In 
2004, the organization reported a membership of more than 
215,000, with members in 51 countries and a U.S. budget of 
$20,000,000. Approximately 85 percent of the membership 
is in the United States. Although membership was histori- 
cally limited to men, in 1988 a resolution admitting women 
to membership passed overwhelmingly and the organiza- 
tion - although still predominately male - includes men and 
women (see below). 

B'nai B'rith was founded in Aaron Sinsheimer's cafe on 
New York's Lower East Side on October 13, 1843, by a group 
of 12 recent German Jewish immigrants led by Henry Jones. 
The new organization represented an attempt to organize 
Jews on the basis of their ethnicity, not their religion, and to 
confront what Isaac Rosenbourg, one of the founders, called 
"the deplorable condition of Jews in this, our newly adopted 
country." 

True to their German heritage, the founders originally 
named the organization Bundes Bruder (Sons of the Cove- 
nant) to reflect their goal of a fraternal order that could pro- 
vide comfort to the entire spectrum of Jewish Americans. 
Although early meetings were conducted in German, after a 
short time English emerged as the language of choice and the 
name was changed to B'nai B'rith. In the late 20 th century, the 
translation was changed to the more contemporary and in- 
clusive Children of the Covenant. 

The organization's activities during the 19 th and 20 th 
centuries were dominated by mutual aid, social service, and 
philanthropy. In keeping with their concerns for protecting 
their families, the first concrete action of the organization was 
the establishment of an insurance policy awarding the widow 
of a deceased members $30 toward funeral expenses and a 
stipend of one dollar a week for the rest of her life. To aid her 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



13 



b'nai b'rith 



children, each child would also receive a stipend and, for a 
male child, the assurance he would be taught a trade. 

Many of the earliest achievements are believed to rep- 
resent firsts within the Jewish community: In 1851, Covenant 
Hall was erected in New York as the first Jewish community 
center in the U.S.; one year later, B'nai Brim established the 
Maimonides Library, also in New York, the first Jewish pub- 
lic library in the U.S.; immediately following the Civil War - 
when Jews on both sides were left homeless - Bnai B'rith 
founded the 200-bed Cleveland Jewish Orphan Home, said 
to have been the most modern orphanage of its time. Over 
the next several years, the organization would establish nu- 
merous hospitals, orphanages, and homes for the aged. 

The organization lays claim to the distinction of being 
the oldest service organization founded in the United States. In 
1868, when a devastating flood crippled Baltimore, B'nai B nth 
responded with a disaster relief campaign. This act preceded 
the founding of the American Red Cross by 13 years and was 
to be the first of many domestic relief programs. That same 
year, the organization sponsored its first overseas philan- 
thropic project, raising $4,522 to aid the victims of a cholera 
epidemic in what was then Palestine. 

In 1875, a lodge was established in Toronto, followed 
soon after by another in Montreal and, in 1882, by a lodge in 
Berlin. This is believed to be the first instance of a Jewish or- 
ganization founded on American soil being carried back to 
the lands from which its founders had migrated. Member- 
ship outside the U.S. grew rapidly. Soon, lodges were formed 
in Cairo (1887) and in Jerusalem (1888 - nine years before 
Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel); the lat- 
ter became the first public organization to hold all of its meet- 
ings in Hebrew. 

After 1881, when mass immigration from Eastern Eu- 
rope poured into the United States, Bnai Brith sponsored 
Americanization classes, trade schools, and relief programs. 
This began a period of rapid membership growth, a change 
in the system of representation, questioning of the secret ritu- 
als common to fraternal organizations, and the beginning of 
a nearly century-long debate on full membership for women. 
In 1897, when the organizations U.S. membership numbered 
slightly more than 18,000, Bnai Brith formed a ladies' auxil- 
iary chapter in San Francisco. This was to become B'nai Brith 
Women and, when B'nai B'rith gave full membership rights 
to women in 1988, to break away as an independent organiza- 
tion, Jewish Women International (see below). 

In response to the ^Kishinev pogrom in 1903 President 
Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay met with 
Bnai B'rith's executive committee in Washington. B'nai B'rith 
President Simon Wolf presented the draft of a petition to be 
sent to the Russian government protesting the lack of oppo- 
sition to the massacre. Roosevelt readily agreed to transmit 
it and Bnai B'rith lodges began gathering signatures around 
the country. 

In the first two decades of the 20 th century Bnai Brith 
launched three of todays major Jewish organizations: the 



*Anti- Defamation League (adl), Hillel, and the Bnai Brith 
Youth Organization (bbyo), Later they would take on a life 
of their own and varying degrees of autonomy. 

In 1913, when it was apparent that antisemitism was not 
to be limited to the European continent, Bnai Brith estab- 
lished the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai B rith (adl). The 
immediate impetus was the false arrest, unfair trial (reflect- 
ing the most profound of antisemitic sentiments on the part 
of the jury), conviction and lynching of Leo *Frank, presi- 
dent of the Gate City, Georgia, B nai Brith lodge. 

The adl has become one of the preeminent forces for 
strengthening interreligious understanding and cooperation, 
improving relationships between the races, and protecting 
the rights and status of Jews. 

In a pattern that was to be followed by other members 
of the Bnai Brith "family," adl has evolved into an autono- 
mous organization which, though formally a part of Bnai 
B'rith and strongly embraced by the organization, is virtually 
independent and is self-sustaining today. 

The 1920s saw a growing concern with preserving Jew- 
ish values as immigration slowed and a native Jewish popu- 
lation of East European ancestry came to maturity. In 1923, 
Rabbi Benjamin Frankel, of Illinois, established an organi- 
zation on the campus of the University of Illinois to provide 
both Reform and Orthodox Sabbath services, classes in Juda- 
ism, and social events for Jewish college students. Two years 
later, he approached B'nai Brith about adopting this new cam- 
pus organization. B'nai B'rith sponsorship of the Hillel Foun- 
dations enabled it to grow into a network that today has more 
than 500 campus student organizations in the United States 
and other countries. 

From the early 1970s onward, funding for Hillel was in- 
creasingly coming from Federations and with funding a re- 
quest for greater control and accountability. Although B'nai 
B'rith continued to support Hillel, in the mid-1990s it became 
a new independent organization, Hillel: The Foundation for 
Jewish Campus Youth. 

At virtually the same time as Hillel was being established, 
Sam Beber of Omaha, Nebraska, presented B'nai B'rith with 
a plan in 1924 for a fraternity for young Jewish men in high 
school. The new organization was to be called Aleph Zadik 
Aleph in imitation of the Greek-letter fraternities from which 
Jewish youth were excluded. In 1925, aza became the junior 
auxiliary of B'nai B'rith. 

In 1940, B'nai B'rith Women adopted its own junior aux- 
iliary for young women, B'nai B'rith Girls, and, in 1944 the 
two organizations became the B'nai B'rith Youth Organiza- 
tion (bbyo). 

bbyo provides informal Jewish educational and social 
programs in the United States and Israel designed to provide 
opportunities for youth from all branches of Judaism to de- 
velop their own Jewish identity, leadership skills, and per- 
sonal development. 

At the beginning of the 21 st century, bbyo growth re- 
quired expanded outside funding. Following the pattern of 



H 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



b'nai b'rith 



Hillel, bbyo secured independent, philanthropic funding 
and with it came the requisite shift of control to the funders. 
B'nai B nth remains the largest single institutional contribu- 
tor to the new organization, bbyo, Inc. 

B'nai B'rith has also been involved in Jewish camping 
for more than half a century. In 1953, Bnai B'rith acquired a 
300-acre camp in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Origi- 
nally named Camp Bnai Brith, the facility would later be 
named B'nai Brith Perlman Camp in honor of the early bbyo 
leader Anita Perlman and her husband, Louis. In 1976, a sec- 
ond camp was added near Madison, Wisconsin. Named after 
the founder of aza, the camp became known as Bnai Brith 
Beber Camp. Both camps function in dual capacities as Jew- 
ish children's camps and as leadership training facilities, pri- 
marily for bbyo. 

In 1938, in response to rampant employment discrimina- 
tion against Jews, Bnai Brith established the Vocational Ser- 
vice Bureau to guide young people into careers. This evolved 
into the B'nai B'rith Career and Counseling Service, an agency 
that provided vocational testing and counseling, and pub- 
lished career guides. In the mid-1980s, the program was dis- 
solved or merged into other community agencies. 

To cope with a shift of American Jewry to the suburbs 
and a corresponding sense of assimilated comfort, in 1948 
Bnai Brith established a department of Adult Jewish Educa- 
tion (aje). It would later become the B nai Brith Center for 
Jewish Identity, aje launched a series of Judaic study week- 
ends (called Institutes of Judaism) held in retreat settings and 
supplemented by informal neighborhood study programs. It 
also began an aggressive program of Jewish book publishing; 
a quarterly literary magazine, Jewish Heritage; and a lecture 
bureau booking noted Jewish scholars and performers for 
synagogues and other institutions. All but the lecture bureau 
were largely phased out in the 1990s, and the organization 
today focuses on program guides for local Jewish education 
programs and annual sponsorship of "Unto Every Person 
There is a Name" community recitations of the names of Ho- 
locaust victims, usually on Yom ha-sho'ah, Holocaust Re- 
membrance Day. 

B'nai B'rith publishes B'nai Brith Magazine, a full-color 
quarterly - the oldest continuously published Jewish periodi- 
cal in the United States (since 1886) - and regional newspa- 
pers reporting on organizational activities, B nai Brith Today. 
In the late 1990s and the early 21 st century, the organization 
ventured into new technologies with the launch of a web- 
site, www.bnaibrith.org; an online 24-hour Jewish music ser- 
vice, www.bnaibrithradio.org; the first Jewish magazine to be 
broadcast on satellite radio, Bnai Brith World Service; and 
the Virtual Jewish Museum, www.jmuseum.org, a resource 
for educators, students, and others seeking international Jew- 
ish art resources. 

From its earliest days, a hallmark of the organizations 
local efforts was service to the communities in which members 
reside. In 1852, that meant raising money for the first Jewish 
hospital in Philadelphia. In the 21 st century, these community 



service efforts range from delivering Jewish holiday packages 
of meals and clothing to the elderly and infirm to distributing 
food and medicine to the Jewish community of Cuba. 

In 1973, the organization turned what had formerly been 
an exhibit hall at its Washington, d.c, headquarters into the 
B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. The museum 
includes an extensive collection of Jewish ceremonial objects 
and art and features the 1790 correspondence between Pres- 
ident George Washington and Moses Seixas, sexton of the 
Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. In 2002, the 
collection moved with the organization to new headquarters 
in Washington. 

With the aging of the American Jewish population, ser- 
vice to seniors became a major focus with the first of what was 
to become a network of 40 senior residences in more than 25 
communities across the United States and more internation- 
ally - making B'nai B'rith the largest national Jewish sponsor 
of housing for seniors. The U.S. facilities - built in partner- 
ship with the Department of Housing and Urban Develop- 
ment (hud) - provide quality housing to more than 6,000 
men and women of limited income, age 62 and over, of all 
races and religions. Residents pay a federally mandated rent 
based upon income. 

In 2001 B'nai B'rith opened its first venture in what is an- 
ticipated to be a broader range of housing options for seniors. 
Covenant at South Hills (near Pittsburgh) is a life-care com- 
munity offering a range of services at market rate enabling 
residents to live independently for as long as possible and re- 
ceive additional health care and supportive services on site 
should the need arise. 

The beginning of the 21 st century also saw the senior ser- 
vice program expand and become a Center for Senior Ser- 
vices, providing advocacy, publications, and other services 
to address financial, legal, health, religious, social, and family 
concerns for those over 50. 

B'nai B'rith involvement in international affairs dates to 
the 1870s when antisemitism, accompanied by a rash of po- 
groms, reached new heights in Romania. Through the influ- 
ence of B'nai B'rith, the American government was induced 
to establish a U.S. consulate, and a former B'nai B'rith presi- 
dent, Benjamin Peixotto, was appointed the first consul. B'nai 
B'rith funded much of the mission. Although he could not 
totally solve it, Peixotto's work was credited with mitigating 
the problem, 

By the 1920s, B'nai B'rith membership in Europe had 
grown to 17,500 - nearly half of the U.S. membership - and 
by the next decade, the formation of a lodge in Shanghai rep- 
resented the organization's entry into the Far East. This in- 
ternational expansion was to come to a close with the rise of 
Nazism. At the beginning of the Nazi era, there were six B'nai 
B'rith districts in Europe. Eventually, the Nazis seized nearly 
all B'nai B'rith property in Europe. 

B'nai B'rith Europe was re-founded in 1948; members and 
representatives from lodges that had survived the Holocaust 
attended the inaugural meeting. In 2000, the new European 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



15 



b'nai b'rith 



B'nai B'rith district merged with the United Kingdom dis- 
trict to become a consolidated B'nai Brith Europe with active 
involvement in all institutions of the European Union. In 
2005 B'nai B'rith Europe comprised lodges in more than 
20 countries, including formerly Communist Eastern Eu- 
rope. 

In response to what later become known as the Holo- 
caust, in 1943 B'nai B'rith President Henry Monsky convened 
a conference in Pittsburgh of all major Jewish organizations 
to "find a common platform for the presentation of our case 
before the civilized nations of the world." During the four 
years which followed, the conference established the machin- 
ery that saved untold numbers of lives, assisted in the postwar 
reconstruction of European Jewish life, and helped spur public 
opinion to support the 1947 partition decision granting Jews 
a share of what was then Palestine. 

Just prior to the creation of the State of Israel, President 
Truman - angry at pressure being placed upon him from 
Jewish organizations - closed the White House doors to Jew- 
ish leaders. B'nai B'rith President Frank Goldman convinced 
fellow B'nai B'rith member Eddie Jacobson, long-time friend 
and business partner of the president, to appeal to him for 
a favor. Jacobson convinced Truman to meet secretly with 
Chaim *Weizmann in a meeting said to have resulted in turn- 
ing White House support back in favor of partition, and ulti- 
mately to recognition of the statehood of Israel. 

B'nai B'rith was present at the founding of the United 
Nations in San Francisco and has taken an active role in the 
world body ever since. In 1947, the organization was granted 
no n- govern mental organizational status and, for many years, 
was the only Jewish organization with full-time representation 
at the un. It is credited with a leading role in the un reversal 
of its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. 

B'nai B'rith's ngo role is not limited to the un and its 
agencies. With members in more than 20 Latin American 
countries, the organization was the first Jewish group to be 
accorded ngo status at the Organization of American States 
(oas) and has been at the forefront advocating on behalf of 
the cause of democracy and human rights throughout the re- 
gion. B'nai B'rith's role in Latin America dates back to the turn 
of the 20 th century and grew considerably with the influx of 
Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe. 

In 1999, when one of the last living Nazi commandants, 
Dinko Sakic, was arrested in Argentina, B'nai B'rith was a 
leader in efforts to extradite him to Croatia to stand trial for 
commanding the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp 
in Croatia. 

In addition to its advocacy efforts, B'nai B'rith main- 
tains an extensive program of community service through- 
out Latin America. In 2002, this took the form of responding 
to the economic disaster that struck much of Latin America 
by distributing - in cooperation with the Brother's Brother 
Foundation - over $31 million of critically needed medicine, 
books, and supplies to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and 
Venezuela. 



In addition to founding Jerusalem Lodge in 1888, life in 
Israel has been a prime focus for the organization. Among 
B'nai B'rith's most noted contributions were the city's first free 
public library, Midrash Abarbanel, which became the nucleus 
of the Jewish National and University Library; the first He- 
brew kindergarten in Jerusalem; and the purchase of land for 
a home for new immigrants, the village of Moza near Jeru- 
salem. When, in 1935, B'nai B'rith donated $100,000 to the 
Jewish National Fund to buy 1,000 acres, the act signaled to 
the world that America's oldest and largest Jewish organiza- 
tion was concretely supporting a continuing Jewish presence 
in what was then Palestine. In 1956, B'nai B'rith became the 
first major American Jewish organization to hold a conven- 
tion in Israel. 

B'nai B'rith is one of the few major Jewish organizations 
headquartered in Washington, d.c, not New York. That be- 
came a fateful horror on March 9, 1977, when, in what was, 
at the time one of the worst terror attacks in America, seven 
members of the Hanafi Muslim sect took over the B'nai B'rith 
Headquarters, the Islamic Center, and Washington, d.c.'s city 
hall. For 39 hours, 123 hostages were held on the top floor 
of the B'nai B'rith building. The building was ransacked, its 
ground floor museum stripped, personnel shot and beaten - 
some severely, some who never recovered from the psycho- 
logical shock. 

The Hanafi terrorists had targeted the three Washing- 
ton buildings in revenge for the slaying of their leader's fam- 
ily members by Philadelphia Black Muslims. B'nai B'rith was 
targeted because the judge in Philadelphia was Jewish. The 
takeover was ended after the intervention of the ambassadors 
from three Muslim countries - Pakistan, Egypt, and Iran - 
convinced the terrorists to surrender to police. 

The symbolism of B'nai B'rith as synonymous with any- 
thing Jewish was an ironic tribute to the organization's repu- 
tation - a synonym found in jokes of comedians, on tv game 
shows, and in the world of politics. In 1981 on the floor of the 
U.S. Senate, Senator Ernest Hollings derisively referred to 
then-Senator Howard Metzenbaum (who is Jewish) as "the 
senator from B'nai B'rith." For many years, when the biennial 
B'nai B'rith Convention was held during presidential elec- 
tion years, it became a presidential forum as Republican and 
Democratic candidates vied for Jewish support. 

Although B'nai B'rith remained the most widely rec- 
ognized name in the Jewish community, from the late 1970s 
B'nai B'rith saw its membership in lodges and units declining 
as young people in suburbia felt less of a need to meet with 
other Jews in a non-religious setting. 

B'nai B'rith responded on two fronts. Drawing upon 
its widely recognized name and respect within the community, 
the organization turned to direct mail fundraising. At much 
the same time, confronting the reality that Jewish fraternal 
groups in the U.S. were unlikely to grow, yet unable to ignore 
the role lodges and units still played in many communities, 
the leadership transformed the program to meet contem- 
porary needs. The most far-reaching changes came in 1996, 



16 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



b'nai b'rith 



under the leadership of President Tommy Baer, when 
traditional U.S. districts were eliminated in favor of smaller, 
locally oriented regions focusing on community-based pro- 
grams. 

Because the sociological changes taking place in the U.S. 
were not evident in Europe, Israel, and Latin America, the ex- 
isting structure of fraternal lodges was left intact and, partic- 
ularly in Latin America, the most influential members of the 
Jewish community are members of B'nai B'rith. 

The restructuring was completed in 2004 with a new ap- 
proach to governance adopted under the direction of Presi- 
dent Joel S. Kaplan and past president Seymour D. Reich. 
Under this plan, a number of leadership structures were dras- 
tically revised to enable the organization to operate more ef- 
ficiently. The outmoded international convention, which fo- 
cused on organizational business, was eliminated in favor of 
new, program -oriented meetings featuring briefings, cultural 
events, etc. and designed to appeal to a broader spectrum of 

the membership. 

[Harvey Berk (2 nd ed.)] 

B'nai B'rith Women 

B'nai Both Women began with an auxiliary woman's chap- 
ter in 1897; the first permanent chapter was founded in San 
Francisco in 1909. As more women's auxiliaries to B'nai B'rith 
formed, the women pressed for official recognition but were 
refused. Only two non-voting female representatives were 
allowed at Grand Lodge meetings. During World War 1, the 
auxiliaries' activities expanded into cultural activities, philan- 
thropy, and community service. B'nai B'rith women served in 
hospitals, settlement houses, offices, and factories, and drove 
ambulances. The women also started their own fund for the 
relief of Jews in Europe. By the beginning of wwn, bbw's 
membership had jumped to over 40,000 members, and it 
produced its first monthly publication, Bnai B'rith Women. 
In 1940, a Women's Supreme Council was formed to coordi- 
nate districts and chapters from national headquarters and 
Judge Lenore Underwood Mills of San Francisco was elected 
the first national president. The Council helped organize early 
girls' chapters of B'nai B'rith into B'nai B'rith Girls (bbg), ap- 
pointing Anita Perlman as chair. During wwn, bbw chapters 
were again involved in volunteer and philanthropic work, as 
well as assisting military servicewomen, and providing aid to 
refugees and orphans. After the war, bbw's efforts turned to 
projects in the developing State of Israel, educational programs 
dedicated to combating prejudice, and supporting Hillel foun- 
dations on university campuses. 

In 1953, women delegates were allowed to vote for the first 
time at the B'nai B'rith Supreme Lodge convention, and in 1957 
the women, who numbered 132,000 in North America, and 
had 41 chapters abroad, formally changed their name to B'nai 
B'rith Women. The feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s 
influenced bbw to advocate for women's healthcare, abortion 
rights, and the image of women in the media, bbw endorsed 
the Equal Rights Amendment in 1971 and participated as an 
ngo in the first un World Conference for Women in 1975. 



In the late 1980s, bbw engaged in a power struggle with 
B'nai B'rith International (bbi) over its status as an autono- 
mous organization. In 1988, bbi finally admitted women as 
full members, but bbw passed a resolution to remain distinct. 
bbw declared full independence in 1995 and changed its name 
to Jewish Women International while retaining a relation- 
ship with B'nai B'rith and its "family members": bbyo, Hil- 
lel, and the Anti-Defamation League. In the early 21 st century 
jwi, with a membership of approximately 75,000, defines its 
mission as championing self-sufficiency for women and girls 
through education, advocacy, and action with a special focus 
on preventing violence, children's well-being, and reduction 
of prejudice, jwi publishes Jewish Woman magazine in print 

and online. 

[Mel Berwin (2 nd ed.)] 

B'nai B'rith Canada 

B'nai B'rith Canada prides itself on being the largest Jewish 
voluntary organization and the largest individual Jewish mem- 
bership organization in Canada. As such it bills itself as the 
"independent voice of the Jewish community, representing 
its interests nationwide to government, ngo's, and the wider 
Canadian public." 

The history of B'nai B'rith Canada reflects both the 
changing patterns of growth, development, and sophistica- 
tion of the Canadian Jewish population, on the one hand, 
and the global issues facing Jews throughout the world, on 
the other. The first B'nai B'rith Lodge in Canada was char- 
tered in Toronto in 1875. Originally an offshoot of American 
B'nai B'rith founded in New York in 1843, the Toronto Lodge 
folded in 1894. As the largely immigrant Jewish population 
in Canada exploded from about 16,000 in 1901 to more than 
156,000 in 1930, B'nai B'rith in Canada was revitalized as it 
helped immigrant Jews in Canada retain communal relation- 
ships outside of the synagogue while easing their integration 
into Canadian society. First rechartered as a branch of a U.S. 
district in 1919, in 1964 it became an autonomous Canadian 
district, District 22. 

Now the largest secular Jewish membership organization 
in Canada, B'nai B'rith at first focused its efforts on expand- 
ing its network of lodges beyond Montreal and Toronto to 
smaller centers across Canada. In 2005 there were 45 estab- 
lished lodges in seven provinces. (B'nai B'rith in British Co- 
lumbia still remains aligned to the West Coast U.S. district.) 
B'nai B'rith Canada continues to provide its members a robust 
social environment together with programs of mutual aid, so- 
cial service, and philanthropy. In 1923 B'nai B'rith organized 
the first Canadian branch of Hillel, the Jewish university stu- 
dent organization, and shortly after, opened its first summer 
camp for Jewish children. These initiatives were followed over 
the years with a wide variety of community service initiatives, 
including the establishment of seniors' residences, the distri- 
bution of holiday baskets, organized visitations to the ill, and 
general fundraising for Jewish and community causes. 

While B'nai B'rith Canada never lost a voluntary commu- 
nity focus that combines direct member services, community 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



17 



BNEI AKIVA 



social service, support for youth, fundraising, and sports, after 
gaining its independent district status under B'nai B nth Inter- 
national, B'nai Both Canada began to assert itself as a repre- 
sentative organization of the Jewish community. Whether, as 
in the past, partnering with the Canadian Jewish Congress and 
other Jewish organizations on various community relations 
and Israel -related initiatives, or, as more recently, striking out 
on its own, B'nai B'rith has been an active presence in defense 
of Jewish and human rights. Beginning with its human rights 
arm, the League for Human Rights (originally affiliated with 
the American B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League), and 
more recently through a second body, the Institute for Inter- 
national Affairs, B'nai B'rith Canada maintains a wide-rang- 
ing program of Jewish advocacy, including public education 
campaigns, political lobbying, liaising with government, and 
monitoring of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda and or- 
ganizations in Canada and internationally. 

Through its League for Human Rights, B'nai B'rith Can- 
ada continues to focus on exposing and combating antisemitic 
activity in Canada. In the past this has included intervention 
in the courts and at human rights tribunals on a variety of 
matters relating to antisemitic hate groups and individuals. 
The League was significantly involved in supporting the hate 
propaganda prosecutions of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel 
and Alberta teacher James Keegstra in the 1980s. Following 
the lead of its American sister organization, in 1983, the League 
also initiated an annual "audit" of antisemitic incidents tak- 
ing place across the country. Recently, in order to both assist 
victims as well as improve the tracking of such behavior, the 
organization established a 24/7 "anti-hate hotline." The 2003 
Audit reported 584 incidents, a 27.2% increase over the pre- 
vious year. 

A further aspect of the League for Human Rights' work 
has been to promote the study of the Holocaust in Canada. 
This work has been hallmarked since 1986 by the organiza- 
tion's Holocaust and Hope Educator's Program through which 
a select group of teachers from across Canada take part in a 
multifaceted program of lectures, visits to the sites of the Ho- 
locaust, and personal contact with survivors. 

The Institute for International Affairs monitors and re- 
sponds to issues relating to Jewish communities around the 
world. An important aspect of this work is to inform and ed- 
ucate the broader Canadian community on issues relating to 
Israel. Through fact-finding missions, public education, at- 
tendance at international conferences, and outreach to other 
groups, the Institute both advocates in support of Israel and 
works to inform Canadians on Israel-related matters. Included 
in this task is a program of political action, informing politi- 
cal leaders at all levels of government and the media of the 
significance of these issues from the perspective of the Cana- 
dian Jewish community. 

[Alan Shefman (2 nd ed.)] 

bibliography: E.E. Grusd, B'nai B'rith: The Story of a Cov- 
enant (1996); M. Bisgyer, Challenge and Encounter (1967); O. Soltes, 
B'nai B'rith: A Covenant of Commitment Over 150 Years (1993); A. 



Weill, B'nai B'rith and Israel: The Unbroken Covenant (1998); M. Baer, 
Dealing in Futures: The Story of a Jewish Youth Movement (1983). b'nai 
b'rith women: L.G. Kuzmack, "B'nai B'rith Women," in: RE. Hyman 
and D. Dash Moore (eds.), Jewish Women in America: An Historical 
Encyclopedia-, vol. 1 (1997), 162-67; "Jewish Women International," at: 
www.jwi.org; "B'nai B'rith Youth Organization: The History of bbg," 
at: www.bbyo.org/bbg/history.html. 

BNEI AKIVA (Heb. Kypjpj}, "Sons of Akiva"), the youth 
movement of *Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi, named after the tanna 
R. "Akiva. It was founded in Jerusalem in 1929. Chief Rabbi 
Avraham Yizhak *Kook served as the spiritual leader of the 
movement. 

From the outset "Torah va-Avodah" ("Torah and Labor"), 
religion and pioneering - represented by the yeshivah and 
the kibbutz - were the two major guidelines of Bnei Akiva's 
educational work and directed its activities. As early as 1931, 
two years after the establishment of the movement, the first 
attempt was made to found a Bnei Akiva kevuzah at Kefar 
Avraham (next to Petah Tikvah). The kevuzah became the 
center of the young movement, but it was a focal point with- 
out a circumference, as the movement was still weak organiza- 
tionally and educationally. After three years of economic and 
social difficulties, the kevuzah was disbanded. Following the 
failure of the first experiment, efforts were made to establish 
a training farm for members of Bnei Akiva. The cornerstone 
of a permanent settlement was laid in 1938, with the estab- 
lishment of a pioneers' nucleus for training at Kefar Gideon. 
In 1940 the members of this group moved to *Tirat Zevi 
and *Sedeh Eliyahu, for further training. After another year, 
this group, together with another from a work camp at Nes 
Ziyyonah, established the kevuzah *Alummot near Netanyah 
as the first Bnei Akiva settlement of its kind. Two years later 
the group moved to Herzliyyah, and in 1947 it established its 
permanent home, Kibbutz Sa'ad, in the northern Negev. By 
1970, the movement had succeeded in establishing six kevuzot, 
three moshavim, four *Nahal settlements, and 64 settlement 
groups throughout Israel. 

In the sphere of religious education, the movement estab- 
lished a yeshivah in 1940 at *Kefar ha-Ro'eh. It served as the 
basis for a network of Bnei Akiva yeshivot (high schools with 
intensive Torah studies programs in addition to general educa- 
tion) and later also for the ulpanot (girls' high schools). Today 
there are 15 yeshivot Bnei Akiva and 9 ulpanot. These institu- 
tions introduced a new approach to the study of the Torah by 
the young generation, which aroused widespread interest in 
circles hitherto uninterested in religious education. Yeshivot 
Hesder, integrating Israel army service with periods of yeshiva 
learning, are also under the auspices of Yeshivot Bnei Akiva. 
By 1995, the movement had 300 branches, a large number of 
which were in new settlements, with a total of over 50,000 
members, increasing to 75,000 by 2004. The basic character- 
istics of a youth movement are found in Bnei Akiva. Scouting 
is cultivated, and each summer large camps are operated. The 
Passover school vacation is dedicated to hikes throughout the 
country. The movement also publishes literary material and 



18 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOARD OF DELEGATES OF AMERICAN ISRAELITES 



educational literature. Since 1936 the quarterly Zeraim has 
been published. After the Six-Day *War (1967), Bnei Akiva 
established Yeshivat ha-Kotel near the Western Wall, and 
members of the movement were the first to resettle within 
the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. It also had two frame- 
works aimed at immigrant youth from Ethiopia and the for- 
mer Soviet Union and a project for young leadership in de- 
velopment towns. 

Bnei Akiva sponsors a variety of activities in the Diaspora 
through the dispatch of emissaries, the training of Diaspora 
leaders through seminars in Israel, and the establishment of 
branches in various countries. In 1954 the world framework 
of Bnei Akiva was established. In 1995 it had about 45,000 
members in close to 100 cities in the Diaspora. Hundreds of 
its graduates settled in Israel annually; hundreds of others go 
for a years training on settlements, and many join settlement 
groups of *Ha-Kibbutz ha-Dati. 

website: www.bneiakiva.org. 

[Itzhak Goldshlag] 

BOARD OF DELEGATES OF AMERICAN ISRAELITES, 

organization representing the first successful attempt at orga- 
nizing American Jewry in furtherance of the civil and political 
rights of Jews, at home and abroad. The experiment lasted 20 
years, after which it was merged into the *Union of Ameri- 
can Hebrew Congregations (then the Seminary Association 
of America) as the Board of Delegates of Civil and Religious 
Rights. It was finally dissolved 66 years after its creation. 

The Board of Delegates was officially formed on in 1859 as 
a Jewish civil rights organization headquartered in New York 
City. Its establishment was partly in response to the 1858 case 
of Edgardo *Mortara, an Italian Jewish boy who had been kid- 
napped by papal authorities after his family's maid had forc- 
ibly converted him; the Vatican would not return a baptized 
Catholic to his non-Catholic parents. Among its founders were 
New York City businessman Henry Hart, financier Isaac Selig- 
man, and philanthropist Samuel Myer Isaacs (see ^Isaacs fam- 
ily), who served as secretary of the Board of Delegates until its 
absorption into the uahc (whereupon he became president 
of the organization). The officers of the Board of Delegates in- 
cluded both civic and religious leaders: one of two elected vice 
presidents was Rabbi Isaac * Leeser of Philadelphia. 

The five primary objectives set forth in the Board of Del- 
egates' constitution were (1) to gather statistical information 
regarding the Jews of the United States; (2) to be the arbiter of 
disputes between congregations, individuals, or public bod- 
ies, in lieu of their resorting to the courts; (3) to promote re- 
ligious education; (4) "to keep a watchful eye on occurrences 
at home and abroad, and see that the civil and religious rights 
of Israelites are not encroached on, and call attention of the 
proper authorities to the fact, should any such violation oc- 
cur"; and (5) to establish and maintain communication with 
other like-minded Jewish organizations throughout the world, 
and especially to establish a "thorough union among all the 
Israelites of the United States." 



Accordingly, the Board of Delegates, whose members 
comprised individuals, organizations, and congregations, 
acted in a twofold capacity: as a central umbrella organization 
for American Jews and as a relief agency for Jews abroad. 

In the U.S., the Board was instrumental in arranging the 
appointment of the first Jewish military chaplain - in 1862, to 
the Union Army during the Civil War - and was the first body 
to collect and record information about the history and size 
of American synagogues. It also encouraged congregational 
schools and established two institutions of higher learning - 
the Educational Alliance and Hebrew Technical Institute in 
New York and Maimonides College in Philadelphia - to train 
Jewish teachers. 

In addition, the Board of Delegates functioned as a sort 
of "anti- defamation league." It denounced General Ulysses S. 
Grants 1862 Order No. 11 expelling Jews from Tennessee, as 
well as Major General Benjamin Franklin Butlers accusations 
that Jews were looters and liars. Grants order was rescinded, 
and Butler issued a public apology for his comments. In 1872, 
the Board of Delegates was also successful - after protesting 
to the U.S. Commissioner of Education - in forcing the City 
College of New York to rescind its policy of scheduling ex- 
aminations on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath. 

Internationally, in i860, the Board of Delegates joined 
the ^Alliance Israelite Universelle, which had been formed 
that year as a central clearinghouse of information and ac- 
tion based in Paris to monitor the plight of Jews worldwide 
and advance their civil rights. Together with its counterpart 
councils in England, France, Austria, and Romania, the Board 
of Delegates assisted Jews throughout the Americas, Europe 
(particularly Romania), North Africa, and the Middle East 
(where Jerusalem and other cities in the Holy Land were un- 
der the governance of Ottoman Palestine). 

Although the Board of Delegates enjoyed some success 
in the United States, factional and ideological conflict weak- 
ened its effectiveness domestically, especially when it came 
to sponsoring initiatives in the realm of education. (Indeed, 
some organizations had opposed the creation of the Board of 
Delegates in the first place.) The major focus of the Boards 
activity, therefore, became the human rights and emancipa- 
tion of Jews in countries like Morocco, Turkey, Romania, and 
Palestine. 

One of the Board of Delegates' lobbying triumphs re- 
sulted in the appointment of Benjamin F. *Peixotto as United 
States Consul to Romania, in an effort to alleviate official per- 
secution of Romanian Jewry. Peixotto's well-publicized tenure 
in Bucharest (1870-76) contributed to the lessening of antise- 
mitic legislation and pogroms. In 1872, the Board of Delegates 
sent representatives to attend its first international conference 
on an issue concerning the Jewish people: a meeting in Brus- 
sels to discuss the predicament of Romanian Jews. 

The plight of Romania's Jews also presented the Board of 
Delegates with the difficult problem of how to handle the ques- 
tion of Jewish immigration to the United States. In this case, 
the Board pressed for increased immigration; at other times, 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



19 



BOARD OF DEPUTIES OF BRITISH JEWS 



however, it argued for restricting immigration only to persons 
possessing certain qualifications. In 1873, the Board, via the 
Alliance, provided the Russian government with statistical and 
employment information on various aspects of Jewish life in 
America, particularly the integration of Jewish citizens. 

The Board of Delegates also supported Jewish causes 
in the Holy Land; it contributed funds to such enterprises as 
the Mikveh Israel Agricultural School in Jaffa and the Jewish 
Hospital in Jerusalem and urged the U.S. government to in- 
tercede with Palestine's Ottoman Turkish rulers in defense of 
the rights of the Jewish minority. 

[Bezalel Gordon (2 nd ed.)] 

BOARD OF DEPUTIES OF BRITISH JEWS, representa- 
tive organization of British Jewry. The institution dates from 
1760, when the Sephardi committee of deputados presented 
a "loyal address" to George 111 and were reproached by the 
Ashkenazi community for acting independently. Both com- 
munities then agreed to consult together on matters of mutual 
interest. Thereafter meetings were intermittent until in 1835 a 
constitution was adopted. At this time the Boards represen- 
tative status was recognized by the government. In 1838, Sir 
Moses *Montefiore became president and, apart from a brief 
interval, held office until 1874. He opposed representation for 
the Reform community, which was only achieved in 1886, a 
year after his death. Membership was based on synagogues, 
London and provincial, and it was not until the present cen- 
tury that representatives of other communal organizations 
were added. 

In the 19 th century, the Board was active in the struggle 
for political emancipation; in protecting persecuted Jewish 
communities overseas, to which end the good offices of the 
British government were enlisted; in ensuring that Jews were 
absolved from the effects of economic legislation designed to 
prevent Sunday work; in safeguarding Jewish interests with 
regard to marriage, divorce, and religious practice generally. 
It also appointed synagogal marriage secretaries which legal- 
ized weddings and, after 1881, was active in projects to inte- 
grate the Russo -Polish immigrants. 

In 1878, the Board and the Anglo-Jewish Association 
formed a Conjoint Foreign Committee, which operated suc- 
cessfully until discredited by its anti-Zionist line in 1917, 
when it disbanded. Reconstituted in 1918 as the Joint For- 
eign Committee, it continued until the Board was "captured" 
by a well -organized Zionist caucus and Selig *Brodetsky be- 
came president in 1943. With this coup the domination by the 
Anglo-Jewish "aristocracy" came to an end. 

The Board has been prominent for many decades in 
protecting and defending the rights of the Jews of the United 
Kingdom; in monitoring and countering antisemitism; in as- 
sisting Jews in all parts of the world; and in promoting Isra- 
els right to live in peace and security with her neighbors. The 
Boards role as the representative voice of the Jewish commu- 
nity in the United Kingdom is acknowledged by government 



and the media. The Board is guided on religious matters by 
its ecclesiastical authorities (namely the chief rabbi and the 
communal rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews Congre- 
gation) and is obliged by its constitution to consult with the 
religious leaders of other groupings which do not recognize 
these ecclesiastical authorities. 

The Board today consists of about 350 members repre- 
senting synagogue and other communal organizations in the 
United Kingdom. The Deputies are elected by the individual 
constituencies every three years, and they in turn elect from 
among themselves a president, three vice presidents, and a 
treasurer who may hold office for two terms. 

The Board works through elected committees - Law, 
Parliamentary and General Purposes; Israel; Foreign Affairs; 
Education, Youth and Information; Defense and Group Re- 
lations; Public Relations; and Finance - which meet regu- 
larly and submit reports for discussion at the monthly ple- 
nary meetings of the Deputies. Administrative matters are 
attended to by the chief executive and a professional staff of 
about 30. 

For many years its offices were at Woburn House in Up- 
per Woburn Place, London, but its offices are currently located 
nearby in Bloomsbury Square. While the Board of Deputies 
has been criticized on a variety of grounds, it is still almost 
always regarded by official bodies and the media as represent- 
ing the official Jewish viewpoint on public issues. 

bibliography: Board of Deputies Annual Report; C.H.L. 
Emanuel, A Century and a Half of Jewish History (1910); V.D. Lip- 
man (ed.)> Three Centuries of Anglo-Jewish History (1961), index s.v. 
Deputies-, L. Stein, Balfour Declaration (1961), index; Brotman, in: J. 
Gould and S. Esh (eds.)> Jewish Life in Modern Britain (1964); ajyb, 58 
(1957), index; Lehmann, Nova Bibl, index; Roth, England, 222f., 251-5. 
add. bibliography: G.Alderman, Modern British Jewry (1992), 
index; A. Newman, The Board of Deputies of British Jews 1/60-1985: 

A Brief Survey (1987). 

[Vivian David Lipman] 

BOAS, Dutch banking family, prominent in The Hague in 
the 18 th century. The founder of the family, hyman (or Abra- 
ham; 1662-1747) was settled in The Hague by 1701. In 1743 he 
sold his business in jewelry, gold, and textiles for the sum of 
80,200 florins to his son tobias (1696-1782), who became 
one of the most important bankers in the Netherlands. He 
loaned huge sums to the Dutch government and to other 
European rulers. His children married into the families of 
the *Court Jews *Gompertz, *Wertheimer, *Oppenheimer, 
and Kann, with whom he had business relations. Tobias was 
strictly Orthodox, supported Jewish scholars, and sponsored 
the publishing of their works. On several occasions he acted 
as shtadlan, representing Jewish interests, in which he was fa- 
cilitated by his connections with European royalty. As such 
he took an active part in organizing Dutch and British diplo- 
matic intervention to prevent the expulsion of the Jews from 
^Prague (1744-45). His sons Abraham and simon contin- 
ued his banking activities. Under the economic stress of the 



20 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOAS, FRANZ 



American War of Independence and the French Revolution, 
however, the firm went bankrupt in 1792. Its failure seriously 
affected the prosperity of the Jewish community, which was 
determined by the family during the entire 18 th century, since 
there was always one individual from the family among the 
official leaders. For many years Tobias financed the employ- 
ment of the rabbi of the community, Saul Halevi. The family 
is frequently mentioned in Jewish and non- Jewish memoirs 
of the period, from the travel diary of H.J.D. *Azulai to the 
autobiography of Casanova. 

bibliography: D.S. van Zuiden, De Hoogduitsche Joden in 
's Gravenhage (1913), passim; H.J.D. Azulai, Magal Tov ha-Shalem 
(1934), 153-5, x 59- add. bibliography: LB. van Crefeld, in: Mis- 
jpoge, 10 (1997), 49-66. 

[Jozeph Michman (Melkman) /Stefan Litt (2 nd ed.)] 

BOAS, ABRAHAM TOBIAS (1842-1923), Australian rabbi. 
Boas, the son of a rabbi, was born in Amsterdam and gradu- 
ated there at the theological seminary. He lived in England 
before immigrating to Adelaide, South Australia, as minister 
of the Hebrew Congregation in 1870, retiring in 1918. While 
his main interest was education, Boas was also active in civic 
affairs. He obtained recognition of the Jewish community as a 
denomination entitled to representation at official functions. 
He introduced the triennial reading of the Law but later re- 
verted to traditional usage. 

His son isaac Herbert (1878-1955) was an Australian 
timber technologist of international repute. Born in Adelaide 
and educated there and in Perth, Western Australia, Boas was 
an academic and industrial chemist before joining the govern- 
ments scientific sector. He perfected a method for utilizing 
the vast eucalyptus reserves for industry. From 1928 to 1944 
he was chief of the division of forest products, the Council for 
Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (csiro), lo- 
cated in Melbourne. During this period his laboratory earned 
worldwide recognition. Boas served as president of the Royal 
Australian Chemical Institute. After his death the timber tech- 
nology research station at Ilanot, Israel, was named for him. 
Boas was active in the Jewish community, serving as president 
of the Jewish Welfare Society and the St. Kilda Hebrew Con- 
gregation in Melbourne. 

Another son, harold boas (1883-1980), was a distin- 
guished architect and town planner in Perth, Western Aus- 
tralia. In the period immediately after World War 11, he was 
one of the main leaders in last-ditch efforts by acculturated 
sectors of the Australian Jewish community to oppose the cre- 
ation of the State of Israel. 

add. bibliography: L.Rosenberg, "Abraham Tobias Boas," 
in: [Sydney] Great Synagogue Congregational Journal (1970); W.D. 
Rubinstein, "The Australian Jewish Outlook and the Last Phase of 
Opposition to 'Political Zionism' in Australia, 1947-1948," in: W.D. 
Rubinstein (ed.), Jews in the Sixth Continent (1987); H.L. Rubinstein, 
Australia I, 305-6, index. 

[Israel Porush / William D. Rubinstein (2 nd ed.)] 



BOAS, FRANZ (1858-1942), U.S. anthropologist who estab- 
lished anthropology as an academic discipline in the U.S.A. 
Born in Minden, Germany, he taught geography at the Uni- 
versity of Berlin, which led to his Arctic expedition to Baf- 
fin Island in 1883-84. Gradually his interest in anthropology 
overtook his interest in cultural geography and in 1885 he 
became assistant in Bastian's Museum fuer Voelkerkunde in 
Berlin. Boas developed a major interest in North Pacific cul- 
ture, which in 1886 took him to British Columbia where he 
began the study of the Kwakiutl Indians, a subject in which 
he retained a lifelong interest. In 1887 he settled in New York 
City, and worked as an assistant editor of Science primarily in 
geography. After some teaching he became affiliated with the 
American Museum of Natural History, where he served as 
curator of ethnology 1901-05. In 1899 he was appointed pro- 
fessor of anthropology at Columbia University. 

After his monograph on the Central Eskimo (1888) he 
planned and participated in the Jesup North Pacific expedi- 
tion. He developed into an authority on the Northwest Pacific 
coast, the Eskimo and Kwakiutl cultures, American Indian 
languages, and Mexican archaeology where he was among 
the first to apply stratographic excavations. 

In effect he restructured anthropology into a modern 
science committed to rigorous empirical method and the 
fundamental idea of the relative autonomy of the phenom- 
ena of culture. 

In Boas' view, neither race nor geographical setting have 
the primary role in forming human beings. Culture is the be- 
havioral environment which forms the patterns of thought, 
feeling, and behavior, producing habits which are an internal- 
ization of traditional group patterns. 

In the field of linguistics his studies of American Indian 
languages and his contributions to modern linguistic tech- 
niques in both phonetics and morphology virtually defined 
American linguistic anthropology. 

Boas' studies of race and environmental factors, employ- 
ing innovative biometric techniques, moved physical anthro- 
pology from static taxonomy to a dynamic biosocial perspec- 
tive. Proceeding to refine the concept of race based on the 
notion of a permanent stability of bodily forms, he stressed 
the influence of environmental factors of human cultural life 
in modifying anatomy and physiology. In this labor his early 
training in physics and mathematics was of great use to him 
in his important investigations of changes in cranial and other 
measurements in children of immigrants. Thus his Changes 
in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants (1912), which 
measured some 18,000 individuals, comparing European im- 
migrant parents and their children in New York City, dem- 
onstrated significant changes in cephalic measurements. He 
also carried forward pioneer longitudinal studies in human 
growth and biometrical genetics. 

After a lifetime in scientific endeavor and public teaching 
regarding the dangers of racism, he participated in various ef- 
forts on behalf of intellectuals persecuted by the Nazi regime 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



21 



BOAS, FREDERICK SAMUEL 



and personally made it possible for many refugees to escape 
to freedom, while emigration was still possible. 

His major works include: Anthropology and Modern Life 
(1932 2 ); Race, Language and Culture (1940); Race and Demo- 
cratic Society (1945); Primitive Art (1951); The Mind of Primi- 
tive Man (1965 3 ); The Central Eskimo (U.S. Bureau of Ameri- 
can Ethnology, Sixth Annual Report 1884-85 (1888), 399-669; 
issued in paperback, 1964); and Ethnology of the Kwakiutl (35 th 
Annual Report 1913-14 (1921), 41-1481). 

bibliography: M.J. Herskovitz, Franz Boas, the Science 
of Man in the Making (1953), incl. bibl.; R.H. Lowie, in: National 
Academy of Sciences, Washington, Biographical Memoirs, 24 (1947), 
303-22, incl. bibl.; A. Kardiner and E. Preble (eds.), They Studied Man 
(1961), 134-59; A. Lesser, in: iess, 2 (1968), 99-110, incl. bibl.; M.B. 
Emeneau, in: TA. Sebeok (ed.), Portraits of Linguists (1966), 122-7; 
R. Jakobson, in: ibid., 127-39. 

[Ephraim FischofT] 

BOAS, FREDERICK SAMUEL (1862-1957), literary scholar. 
Boas was professor of English at Queens College, Belfast Uni- 
versity (1901-05) and specialized in Shakespearean and Eliza- 
bethan studies. His works include Christopher Marlowe (1940) 
and introductions to Tudor and Stuart drama. Boas was a 
well-known Shakespearian scholar who first applied the term 
"problem plays" to Shakespeare's later comedies. His son, Guy 
Boas, was a prominent contributor to Punch. 

[William D. Rubinstein (2 nd ed.)] 



classics. She studied Ancient History, Greek and Latin and 
wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on Aeneas' Arrival in Latium 
(1938) at the University of Amsterdam. From February to 
May 1940 she was in Paris doing research, and from there she 
managed to get to London, where she worked in the Dutch 
section of the bbc. From 1947 till 1951 she lived in Palestine/ 
Israel and wrote for various newspapers. After her return to 
the Netherlands she worked as a correspondent for the Israeli 
newspapers Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post and the English 
weekly Jew ish Chronicle. 

Between 1959 and 1981 she taught Greek and Latin at 
various schools in Holland. She continued to write for the 
above newspapers and in Dutch she contributed to Aleh, the 
quarterly of Dutch immigrants in Israel, and to Jewish peri- 
odicals in the Netherlands. She wrote on Dutch topics in the 
first edition and Year Books of the Encyclopaedia Judaica as 
well as for the American Jewish Yearbook (1987-99). She also 
participated in symposia and lectured on Dutch Jewish liter- 
ary and historical topics. 

The Dr. Henriette Boas Stichting (Amsterdam) estab- 
lished the Dr. Henriette Boas Prize for journalists and other 
popular writers who make outstanding achievements in the 
field of Dutch Jewish history and culture. Shaul Kesslassi and 
Daphne Meijer made a documentary film about her life called 
Ik lees de krant met een schaar (NiK-Media, Hilversum, De- 
cember 2004). 

[F.J. Hoogewoud (2 nd ed.)] 



BOAS, GEORGE (1891-1980), U.S. philosopher, a major 
figure in the history of ideas movement in America. From 
1924 to 1957 he was professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins 
University, Baltimore. He also served as chairman of the phi- 
losophy department. His major studies were in the areas of 
esthetics, the history of thought, and French philosophy. He 
also translated several works from French. Boas was on the 
board of editors of the Journal of the History of Ideas, from its 
inception in 1945 until his death. In 1953, at the height of the 
McCarthy period, Boas helped edit Lattimore the Scholar, in 
defense of Owen Lattimore, who was under attack. 

His major writings include The Happy Beast in French 
Thought of the 17 th Century (1933), A Primer for Critics (1947), 
Essays on Primitivism (1948), Wingless Pegasus (1950), The 
Mind's Road to God: Bonaventura (1953), Dominant Themes 
of Modern Philosophy (1957), The Inquiring Mind (1959), Ra- 
tionalism in Greek Philosophy (1961), The Heaven of Invention 
(1962), The Challenge of Science (1965), The Cult of Childhood 
(1966), The Limits of Reason (1968), The History of Ideas: An 
Introduction (1969), and Vox Populi: Essays in the History of an 
Idea (1969). A collection of Boas' essays, entitled Primitivism 
& Related Ideas in the Middle Ages, was published in 1997. 

[Richard H. Popkin / Ruth Beloff (2 nd ed.)] 

BOAS, HENRIETTE (1911-2001), Dutch classical scholar and 
journalist. Boas was born in Amsterdam, the eldest daughter 
of Dr. Marcus Boas (1879-1940), a learned private teacher of 



BOAZ (Heb. T3&), the son of Salmah, great-grandfather of 
King David. Boaz was descended from Nahshon, the son of 
Amminadab (Ruth 4:20-22; 1 Chron. 2:10-15), prince of the 
tribe of Judah in the generation of the wilderness (Num. 1:7). 
He lived in Beth-Lehem in the time of the Judges and is de- 
scribed as a "man of substance," that is, a wealthy landowner 
employing many young men and women on his estate (Ruth 
2:1). *Ruth, the Moabite daughter-in-law of Naomi, came to 
glean in his fields, and Boaz expressed his appreciation for her 
kindness and devotion to the widowed Naomi. Being a kins- 
man of Elimelech, Ruth's late father-in-law, Boaz undertook to 
redeem the latter s inheritance. He then married Ruth {ibid., 

2:11-12; 3:12; 4:1-15). 

[Nahum M. Sarna] 

In the Aggadah 

Boaz was a prince of Israel (Ruth R. 5:15) and the head of the 
bet din of Beth-Lehem. He is, therefore, sometimes identified 
with the judge Ibzan of Beth-Lehem (Judg. 12:8) who lost his 
sixty children during his lifetime (bb 91a). Ruth and Naomi 
arrived in Beth-Lehem on the day on which Boaz* wife was 
buried (ibid.). He had a vision that Ruth would be the an- 
cestress of David (Shab. 113b). When Ruth told him that as a 
Moabite she was excluded from marrying him (Deut. 23:4), 
Boaz responded that this prohibition applied only to the males 
of Moab and not to the females (Ruth R. 4:1). Although a 
prince, Boaz himself supervised the threshing of the grain and 
slept in the barn in order to prevent profligacy (Ruth R. 5:15). 



22 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOBOV 



When awakened by Ruth, he believed her to be a devil, and 
only after touching her hair was he convinced to the contrary 
since devils are bald (Ruth R. 6:1). The six measures of barley 
which he gave her were a symbol of her destiny to become the 
ancestress of six pious men, among them David and the Mes- 
siah (Sanh. 93a-b). Boaz was 80 years old and Ruth 40 when 
they married (Ruth R. 6:2), and although he died the day after 
the wedding (Mid. Ruth, Zuta 4:13), their union was blessed 
with a child, Obed, Davids grandfather. In recognition of his 
merits, certain customs that Boaz originated were retained 
and received heavenly approval - the use of the Divine name 
in greeting ones fellow man (Ruth 2:4; Ber. 9:5) and the cer- 
emony of pronouncing benedictions on a bridal couple in the 
presence often men (Ket. 7a). 

bibliography: S. Yeivin, in: Eretz Israel, 5 (1958), 97-104; 
W. Rudolph, Ruth (1962 2 ), 36; J.A. Montgomery, in: jqr, 25 (1934/35), 
265; R.B.Y. Scott, in: jbl, 58 (1939), 143 ff.; M. Burrows, ibid., 59 (1940), 
445-6; F. Dijkema, in: Nieuw Theologisch Tijdschrift, 24 (1953), 111-8; 
em, 2 (1965), 282-3 (incl. bibl.). in the aggadah: Ginzberg, Leg- 
ends, 4 (i947)> 30-34; 6 (1946), 187-94. 

BOBE-MAYSE, Yiddish expression for a fantastic or incred- 
ible tale. The term is based on the title of the Yiddish chivalric 
romance that Elijah *Levita adapted from the Tuscan Buovo 
d'Antona (based on the original i4 th -century Anglo-Norman 
Boeuve de Haumton). This work, popular among Ashkenazi 
Jews, originally appeared as Bovo D'Antona and was subse- 
quently printed as *Bove-Bukh; in later *chapbook editions 
it was titled Bove-Mayse (mayse, "tale"). The similarity of Bove 
to Bobe (Yid. "grandmother") led to the substitution of Bobe- 
Mayse for Bove-Mayse, and to the use of the former expres- 
sion for any "grandmothers tale" (i.e., incredible story), with 
no connection to the original romance. 

bibliography: Zedner, in: hb, 6 (1863), 22-23; Zedner, 
Cat, 94; N.B. MinkorT, Elye Bokher un Zayn Bove Bukh (1950) add. 
bibliography: Ch. Shmeruk, Prokim fun der Yidisher Literatur- 
Geshikhte (1988), 154-56. 

[Sol Liptzin / Jean Baumgarten (2 nd ed.)] 

BOBER, ROBERT (1931- ), French writer and director of 
documentary films. Bober was born in Berlin in 1931, but the 
family fled with the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 and settled 
in working-class neighborhoods of Paris. Bober left school 
early, just after completing the "Certificat d'Etudes Primaires" 
(end of primary school), and worked successively as a tailor, 
a potter, and an assistant for film director Francois Truffaut. 
Since being hired by French public television as a film direc- 
tor in 1967, he directed over 100 documentary films covering 
a variety of domains, some of them with renowned journalist 
and producer Pierre Dumayet, including portraits of i9 th -and 
20 th -century French writers (Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, Valery, 
Dubillard, Queneau) or artists (Van Gogh, Alechinsky). A 
more intimate side of his work is connected to his own story 
as a Jewish refugee of Polish descent, born in Germany, who 
managed to live through the Holocaust: Refugie provenant 



d'Allemagne, dbrigine polonaise (1975-76) exemplifies this 
search for his roots, which Bober traces back to R adorn, in 
Poland. Several of Bober s films deal with Ashkenazi Jewish 
culture and yiddishkeit (Sholem Aleikhem, 1967; Martin Bu- 
ber), or with the permanence of memory and remembrance 
(The Generation After, 1970-71). Photography was thus im- 
portant to him, as a witness to a vanished or vanishing 
past. Bober was awarded a grand prize for lifetime achieve- 
ment by the Societe Civile des Auteurs Multimedia in 1991. 
Subsequently he published two outstanding and deeply au- 
tobiographical novels, Quoi de neufsur la guerre? (1993), and 
Berget Beck (1999), the first one set in a Jewish-owned clothing 
factory, the second in a Jewish educational facility, both of 
them in the immediate aftermath of World War 11 and both 
dealing in a very sensitive and low-key manner, yet power- 
fully, with Holocaust memories and the difficult way back to 
normal life for ordinary working people whose lives had been 
shattered. Both novels have been successfully adapted for 
stage. 

Bober shared with writer George *Perec a similar per- 
sonal history (Perec dealt with the Holocaust in the novel W 
ou le souvenir denfance), as well as with a childhood in the 
same eastern neighborhoods of Paris (the rue Vilin, which was 
the setting of an unfinished work- in -progress by Perec, mix- 
ing photography and text, became the subject of Bober s En 
remontant la rue Vilin, a tribute to Perec which won the silver 
prize at the fipa contest in 1993). Together they worked on a 
documentary film, Recits d'Ellis Island (1986), where, though 
not directly confronting the Holocaust, they dealt with stories 
of wandering and exile echoing their own stories. 

[Dror Franck Sullaper (2 nd ed.)] 

BOBOV, hasidic group that began with Solomon *Halberstam 
(1847-1905), who lived in the Galcian town of Bobowa. Solo- 
mon was the grandson of Rabbi Hayyim of Sanz, founder of 
the Sanzer hasidim. Solomon enjoyed great popularity among 
the young people in his area, whom flocked to hear his Torah 
and to seek his counsel. He is credited with starting the first 
yeshivah in Poland. He was succeeded by his son Ben Zion 
Halberstam (1874-1941). Ben Zion continued his fathers work 
in education. By the beginning of World War 11, he had es- 
tablished 60 satellite yeshivot, with the yeshivah in Bobov as 
the center. Ben Zion, along with two of his sons, two sons- 
in-law, and his daughters perished at the hands of the Nazis 
in the Holocaust. His son Solomon (1908-2000) managed to 
escape the Nazis by fleeing to Italy. Immediately after the war, 
Solomon made his way to New York City. He settled first in 
Manhattan, then moved to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and 
finally to Boro Park in Brooklyn, where he remained. Boro 
Park continued to be the world center of the Bobover hasidim 
and the home of the rebbe. At the end of World War 11, only 
300 Bobover hasidim remained. Solomon managed to obtain 
visas for them as well as for hundreds of orphans who were in 
the Italian transfer camps to join him in America. These or- 
phans were among the very first students enrolled in the new 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



23 



BOBROVY KUT 



Bobover schools in America. One of the first educational insti- 
tutions started by Solomon was a trade school in Manhattan. 
The purpose was to teach hasidic refugees marketable skills so 
they could earn a living. These schools were the beginning of a 
network of Bobov schools and yeshivot that currently stretches 
from Brooklyn to Toronto, Canada, to London, to Antwerp, 
and to Israel. They are the hallmark of a remarkable rebuild- 
ing of Bobov hasidism from a few hundred to well over 20,000 
hasidim around the world. Some estimate that there were as 

• 

many as 100,000 Bobov hasidim at the turn of the century. 
There were approximately 7,000 men and women in Bobover 
schools in America. In Israel, there was a Bobov community 
just outside Bat Yam, as well as large yeshivot in Jerusalem and 
Bene-Berak. The Israeli branch pursues a non-confrontational 
but non-Zionist stance vis-a-vis the Israeli government. Their 
sons do not serve in the idf. 

Throughout his tenure as rebbe y Solomon steered clear 
of the disputes that have marred the relationships between 
other hasidic groups. He was also very actively involved in 
the lives of his hasidim, attending innumerable bar mitz- 
vahs, weddings, and circumcisions. At the time of his death 
in 2000, Bobov was one of the three largest hasidic groups 
(with Lubavitch and Satmar). Solomon was succeeded by his 
son Naftali (1931-2005), who, during his last years, was con- 
stantly ill. He did not leave a son to succeed him; thus a dis- 
pute broke out on the day of his funeral as to who would be 
the next rebbe y his younger half-brother, Benzion, or his son- 
in-law, Mordechai Unger. Benzion gained the upper hand; 
however, it remained to be seen if there would be a split in 
the Bobov hasidic group. 

Solomon Halberstam, the first American Bobover rebbe, 
published a two -volume compilation of his fathers comments 
on the Pentateuch and the holidays, titled Sefer Kedushat Zion 
(!994)- His own comments on the high holy days were pub- 
lished posthumously, entitled Si ah Shelomo (2002). Over the 
years, Bobov published numerous small monographs (kun- 
tresim) on a wide variety of topics, including all of the holi- 
days and various books of the Bible. They also published a 
number of biographies of their rebbes, especially the first two, 
who lived in Europe (see bibliography). At one point, they also 
published a Bobov telephone book, listing their numerous in- 
stitutions around the world. 

bibliography: J.S. Belcove-Shalin, in: New World Hasidim 
(1995), 205-36; S. Epstein, in: ibid., 237-55; D- Gliksman, Nor the Moon 
by Night: The Survival of the Chassidic Dynasty of Bobov (1997); A. 
Twerski and B. Twerski, in: Jewish Observer 33:8 (Oct. 2000), 10-21; 
Toledot Admorei Bobov (1981); H.D. Bakan, Shir ha-Maalot le-She- 
lomo (1999); A. Sorski, Hekhal Bobov: Perakim be-Divrei ha-Yamim 
ve-Toroteihem shel Avot ha-Shoshelet (1986); Zion be-Mar Tivkeh: 
OsefMaamarei Taaniyyah ve-Tamrurim ve-Divrei Zikaron... Maran 
Shelomo Halberstam (2004); S. Lipman, in: The Jewish Week (Aug. 
11, 2000); Forum van dejoden van Antwerpen, vol. 111 (Apr. 1, 2005), 
29-31; websites: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Bobov; 
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/wBG/wbg-jewish.htm; http://www. 
consultmi.com/bobov. 

[David Derovan (2 nd ed.)] 



BOBROVY KUT, Jewish agricultural settlement in Niko- 
layev district, Ukraine. It was established in 1807 with pri- 
vate funds and settled by families from Mogilev, Belorussia. 
The settlement numbered 406 Jews in 1810, and 165 families 
in 1815 (416 men and 327 women). Additional families were 
transferred there in 1825, 1837, and 1841, and the settlement 
numbered 1,184 in 1849, 1,248 in 1897, and over 2,000 in 1926, 
but dropped to 600 (136 families) in 1936. Under the Soviet 
government, Bobrovy Kut was incorporated in the autono- 
mous Jewish district of Kalinin do rf and like the other Jewish 
agricultural settlements traversed many vicissitudes. It suf- 
fered years of hunger, was changed into a kolkhoz, and un- 
derwent "internationalization" (i.e., admission of non-Jews). 
The Jewish settlers were often accused of being "petit-bour- 
geois," nationalists, or Zionists. Many of the younger settlers 
were arrested and deported, while most of the older ones left. 
A Yiddish school was in operation in the 1930s. Bobrovy Kut 
was occupied by the Germans on August 27, 1941. They soon 
murdered 850 Jews from the village and its environs, and in 
September 300 from the surrounding kolkhozes. Bobrozy Kut 
was the birthplace of the poet S. *Frug. 

bibliography: V.N. Nikitin, Yevrei Zemledeltsy i8oy-i88y 
(1887); J. Lestschinsky, Ha-Yehudim be-Rusyah ha-Sovyetit (1943), 
163-72; Gurshtein, in: Haklaim Yehudim be-Arvot Rusyah (1965), 
383-6. add. bibliography: pk Ukrainah, s.v. 

[Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

BOBRUISK, capital of Bobruisk district, Belarus; became 
part of Russia after the second partition of Poland in 1793. 
Jewish settlement there is first mentioned at the end of the 
17 th century. The kehillah of Bobruisk was included in the ju- 
risdiction of the township of Smilovichi (see ^Councils of the 
Lands). Three hundred and fifty-nine Jewish poll taxpayers are 
recorded in Bobruisk in 1766. The community increased ap- 
preciably after Bobruisks accession to Russia. The supply of 
provisions to the garrison of the large fortress built there at the 
beginning of the 19 th century became a major source of Jew- 
ish employment. Toward the middle of the 19 th century, Jews 
also took part in lumbering activities, since Bobruisk became 
an important lumber center, where timber from the adjacent 
forests was rafted or entrained to southern Russia or the Baltic 
ports. The Jewish population numbered 4,702 in 1847; 8,861 
in 1861; 20,760 in 1897 (60% of the total); and 25,876 (61%) in 
1914. It dropped to 21,558 Jews (42%) in 1926 and rose again 
to 26,703 (total 84,078) in 1939. 

There were numerous yeshivot in Bobruisk. Distin- 
guished rabbis who officiated there included leaders of *Habad 
Hasidim (Mordecai Baruch Ettinger, Hillel of Paritch, Shema- 
riah Noah Schneerson) as well as mitnaggedim (Jacob David 
Willowski (Ridbaz), and Raphael Shapiro, afterward head 
of the Volozhin yeshivah). The Hebrew author M. Rabinson 
served as "government-appointed" rabbi from 1911. Toward 
the end of the 19 th century, Bobruisk became a center of cul- 
tural and political activity for Belorussian Jewry in which both 
the Zionist and radical wings were prominent. The publishing 



24 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOCHNIA 



house of Jacob Cohen Ginsburg became celebrated through- 
out Russia. The "model" heder> established in 1900, provided 
comprehensive Hebrew instruction and did much to raise the 
standard of Hebrew education. A popular Jewish library was 
also opened there. After its founding, Bobruisk became one 
of the main bases of the *Bund; in 1898 its clandestine print- 
ing press was seized in Bobruisk by the police. 

After World War 1, the Jewish population suffered from 
the frequent changes of government during the civil war and 
the Soviet-Polish war (1918-21). Subsequently, Jewish activities 
ceased. J. Ginsburg and other publishers continued to print 
prayer books and other religious publications in Bobruisk un- 
til 1928; the last work of Jewish religious literature to be pub- 
lished in the Soviet Union, Yagdil Torah> was printed in Bo- 
bruisk. A network of 12 Jewish schools giving instruction in 
Yiddish was established in Bobruisk after the 1917 Revolution, 
enrolling 3,000 pupils in 1936 and functioning until 1939. Bo- 
bruisk was occupied by the Germans on June 28, 1941. Seven 
thousand succeeded in fleeing but 3,500 Jews were murdered 
at the beginning of July and 800 men on August 5 after sup- 
posedly being taken to a labor camp. A ghetto was established 
in an open field near the airport. On November 7, 1941, 20,000 
Jews were sent from there to their deaths. Another 5,281 Jews 
were later executed after they refused to wear the yellow badge 
and report for forced labor. Small groups fled to the forests, 
where they joined Soviet partisan units. The Jewish popula- 
tion increased after the war, and was estimated at 30,000 in 
the 1970s and 10,000 in 1989. There was no synagogue under 
the Soviets, the last one having been closed in 1959, but there 
were said to be underground minyanim. There was a separate 
Jewish cemetery. Most of the Jews emigrated in the 1990s as 
the Jewish population of Belarus dropped by over 75%, but 
Jewish life begain to revive with a synagogue, day school, and 
Sunday school in operation. Bobruisk was the birthplace of 
Pauline *Wengeroff, I. *Nissenbaum, Berl *Katznelson, David 
*Shimoni, Yizhak *Tabenkin, Kadish *Luz, and Y. *Tunkel. 

bibliography: Y. Slutsky (ed.), Sefer Bobruisk (Heb. and 
Yid., 1967). add. bibliography: Jewish Life, s.v. 

[Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

BOBTELSKY, MORDEKHAI (Max; 1890-1965), Israel inor- 
ganic chemist and pioneer of heterometry, born in Vladislavov 
(Naumiestis), Lithuania. Bobtelsky taught at Orel and Vitebsk 
(1916-1922). He worked with Fritz *Haber in Berlin, and then 
in a large inorganic chemicals factory in Aussig (Usti nad 
Labem), Czechoslovakia. He went to Palestine in 1925 as chief 
chemist of Palestine Potash Ltd. and joined Hebrew Univer- 
sity, Jerusalem (1927), becoming professor of inorganic and 
analytical chemistry in 1937. Many of his writings were de- 
voted to heterometry. 

°BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI (1313-1375), Italian author, 
whose greatest work, i7 Decamerone, contains a number of 
Jewish elements. The son of a Florentine merchant, Boccac- 
cio was apprenticed in his youth to a merchant in Naples and 



may have come into contact with some of the Jews who were 
flourishing in Neapolitan commerce at that time. He later in- 
troduced Jews into two of the early tales of the Decameron (the 
second and third story of the "First Day" of the cycle). Boc- 
caccio summarized the second story as follows: "Abraham, a 
Jew, at the instance of Jehannot de Chevigny, goes to the court 
of Rome, and having marked the evil life of the clergy, returns 
to Paris and becomes a Christian * (because God would toler- 
ate such conduct only in followers of the true faith). His sum- 
mary of the third story is "Melchisedech, a Jew, by a story of 
three rings, averts a great danger with which he was menaced 
by Saladin." He uses the character of Abraham to criticize the 
contemporary ecclesiastical establishment and the corruption 
of the clergy, and that of Melchisedech to praise human wis- 
dom. Both tales are based on medieval literature, Christian as 
well as Jewish. A story of three rings or three precious stones, 
representing the debate as to the relative excellence of the three 
monotheistic religions, is used by early English, French, and 
Italian writers. The theme also appears in Jewish literature in 
the Shevet Yehudah (ch. 32) of Solomon *Ibn Verga (ed. Y.F. 
Baer (1947), 78-80). Although this was not published until 
1550, the author was undoubtedly quoting a story which was 
well-known long before he wrote his book. Debates between 
representatives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are often 
to be found in medieval Hebrew literature. 

Boccaccio s choice of Jews as heroes would appear to re- 
sult from the great emphasis he placed on wisdom and tol- 
erance, both of which he regarded as Jewish characteristics. 
In his very earliest stories he stressed the keen intelligence of 
the Jew, his freedom from blind ideology, and his adaptabil- 
ity. Regarding the Jewish character as essentially realistic and 
individualistic, he also used his two heroes to mock any regi- 
mented approach to life. Boccaccio had an important and for- 
mative influence on European literature. The strongest echo 
of his Melchisedech story occurs in Nathan the Wise (1779), a 
play on the theme of religious tolerance by the German dra- 
matist Gotthold Ephraim *Lessing. Some reflection of the 
"three rings" story has also been detected in the casket scene 
in ^Shakespeare s Merchant of Venice. 

bibliography: G. Paris, La leggenda di Saladino (1896); 
idem, La Poesie du Moyen-Age, 2 (1895); M. Penna, La Parabola dei 
tre anelli e la tolleranza nel Medio Evo (1953); H.G. Wright, Boccac- 
cio in England... (1957); H. Hauvette, Boccace... (1914); R. Ramat et 
al., Scritti Su Giovanni Boccaccio (1964). add. bibliography: S. 
Zoeller, in: Aschkenas 7, 2 (1997), 303-39; A.L. Mittleman, in: Har- 
vard Theological Review 95, 4 (2002), 353-72; M. Aptroot, in: Zutot 

3 (2003), 152-59. 

[Isaac GartiJ 

BOCHNIA (from 1939 to 1945 called Salzberg), town in Cra- 
cow province, Poland, noted for its rock-salt deposits. In 1555 
the Jews of Bochnia, who engaged in marketing and contract- 
ing for the salt impost, were granted a general privilege by 
King Sigismund Augustus. Jews there were accused of steal- 
ing the Host in 1605 and a Jewish miner, allegedly the insti- 
gator, died under torture. Subsequently the Jews were expel- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



25 



BOCHUM 



led from Bochnia, and the city received the privilege de non 
tolerandis Judaeis. This exclusion of the Jews remained in 
force until i860, but Jews were allowed to resettle in the 
town only in 1862. They numbered 1,911 in 1900 and 2,459 hi 
1921. 

Holocaust Period 

An estimated 3,500 Jews (20% of the total population) lived 
in Bochnia in 1939. The German Army entered the town on 
Sept. 3, 1939, and immediately subjected the Jewish popula- 
tion to persecution and terror. In May 1940 a huge Contribu- 
tion' of 3,000,000 zloty ($600,000) was imposed by the Nazis 
upon the Jewish population. In March 1942 a ghetto was es- 
tablished to which the entire Jewish population from all the 
surrounding towns and villages was brought. In August 1942 
a massive Aktion was conducted by police units from Cracow. 
About 600 Jews were killed on the spot and another 2,000 
deported to Belzec death camp. On Nov. 2, 1942, a second 
deportation took place during which about 70 people were 
killed and more than 500 deported to Belzec. In September 
1943 the entire ghetto was liquidated. No Jewish community 
was reestablished in Bochnia after the war. 

[Stefan Krakowski] 

bibliography: Podhorizev-Sandel, in: bzih, no. 30 (1959), 
87-109; M. Borwicz, Dokumenty zbrodni i Meczenstwa (1945), 152. 

BOCHUM, city in northern Rhine- Westphalia, Germany. 
The presence of Jews there is mentioned in 1349. A synagogue, 
erected in 1594, is mentioned again in 1652. In 1800 there were 
27 Jewish residents (1.6% of the total population), mainly cat- 
tle merchants and butchers. The number increased to 1,002 
by 1900 (0.27%) and to 1,152 in 1933. It maintained two syna- 
gogues (one established by the Orthodox Polish community), 
a heder, a Hebrew school, a Jewish elementary school, eight 
benevolent societies, and cultural organizations. M. David 
served as rabbi from 1901 to 1936. 

On October 28, 1938, some 250 Polish or stateless Jews 
were expelled from Bochum, and on November 10 - Kristall- 
nacht - the main synagogue was set on fire and Jewish shops 
and homes were looted. Jewish males were arrested and tem- 
porarily interned in Sachsenhausen. By June 17, 1939, only 355 
Jews remained in the city. During World War 11 they were de- 
ported to *Riga, *Zamosc, ^Auschwitz, and *Theresienstadt 
in five transports embarking from Dortmund between Janu- 
ary 1942 and March 1943. In 1943 and 1944 three forced labor 
camps were established in the city. In March 1945 about 2,000 
of the workers were sent to Buchenwald; most were probably 
murdered. After the war about 40 Jews returned to Bochum. 
In 1953 the Jewish inhabitants of the neighboring towns of Bo- 
chum, Heme, and ^Recklinghausen united to establish a com- 
munity, with the center in Recklinghausen, where a synagogue 
was consecrated in 1955. There were 66 Jews in the three towns 
in 1989. Since then, the number of Jewish inhabitants has in- 
creased greatly as a result of the immigration of Jews from 
the former Soviet Union. Consequently, the Jews of Bochum, 



Heme, and Hattingen formed an independent community in 
1999, numbering 1,091 members in 2003. 

bibliography: pk; 50. Jahre Juedische Gemeinde Bochum 
(1892); fjw (1932/33), 158; Germ Jud, 2 (1968), 89-90. add. bibli- 
ography: Synagogen und juedische Volksschulen in Bochum und 
Wattenscheid (1988); M. Keller (ed.), Spuren im Stein (1997). 

BOCK, JERRY (1928- ), U.S. composer. One of the most 
successful Broadway theater composers of the 1960s (Fiddler 
on the Roof, Fiorello!, She Loves Me), Jerrold Lewis Bock was 
born in New Haven, Conn., and grew up in Queens, n.y. He 
took up the piano and composition as a boy. He wrote his 
first musical in public school, wrote another in high school, 
which was produced at the school, and wrote the show Big as 
Life, which was staged in 1948 at the University of Wisconsin, 
where he was a student. Beginning after his graduation, he 
teamed with Larry Holofcener to write special musical ma- 
terial for television. In 1956 he composed his first complete 
Broadway score for Mr. Wonderful, starring Sammy *Davis 
Jr., and two years later began his successful collaboration with 
Sheldon *Harnick. Their first production, The Body Beautiful, 
was a flop, but they enjoyed working together and a year later 
produced Fiorello!, based on the life of the New York mayor, 
Fiorello H. *LaGuardia. The show won a Pulitzer Prize. An- 
other New York-inspired musical, Tenderloin, followed in 
i960. Perhaps the best Bock-Harnick score was produced for 
the 1963 musical She Loves Me, based on the 1940 Ernst *Lu- 
bitsch film The Shop Around the Corner. The story, involving 
two bickering workers in a Budapest parfumerie who fall in 
love through an exchange of letters, contained such long-last- 
ing songs as "Vanilla Ice Cream" "Will He Like Me," and "A 
Trip to the Library." 

In 1964 the Bock-Harnick collaboration provided the 
score for Fiddler on the Roof, which contained the classics 
"Matchmaker, Matchmaker," "If I Were a Rich Man," and 
"Sunrise, Sunset." The show, with Zero *Mostel portraying 
Sholom *Aleichem , s Tevye the milkman, became the most 
popular musical and longest- running show in the history of 
Broadway and spawned productions worldwide in dozens of 
languages. It won nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical, 
and was revived a number of times on Broadway. A 1971 film 
version, with song and story about shtetl life, starred the Israeli 
actor Chaim *Topol and was hugely successful. The family's 
story, of living in poverty, of Jews facing religious discrimi- 
nation and pogroms, of the difficulties of raising a family in 
changing times, contained universal messages, and audiences 
around the world were quick to relate to them. 

The team went on to write Baker Street, built around the 
character of Sherlock Holmes, and The Apple Tree, adapted 
from the work of Mark Twain, but these did not achieve the 
success of their previous work. The last Bock-Harnick project 
was The Rothschilds, an original musical based on the history 
of the banking family. It had its Broadway debut in 1970 and 
ran for more than a year. 

[Stewart Kampel (2 nd ed.)] 



26 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BODENHEIMER, MAX ISIDOR 



BODANSKY, OSCAR (1901-1977), U.S. biochemist. Born in 
Russia, Bodansky was taken to U.S. in 1907. He taught at the 
universities of California and Texas, and at New York Uni- 
versity. He served as director of medical research, U.S. Army 
Medical Corps during World War 11. He joined the Cornell 
Medical College faculty (1946), becoming professor of bio- 
chemistry in 1951, and worked at Sloan-Kettering Institute for 
Cancer Research from 1948, becoming vice president in 1966. 
He and his brother meyer (1896-1941) wrote Biochemistry of 
Diseases (1940, 1952). 

BODANZKY, ARTHUR (1877-1939), conductor. Born in 
Vienna, Bodanzky made his debut in 1900 conducting Jones' 
The Geisha with the 18-man orchestra in Ceske Budejovice. 
In 1903 he became assistant to Gustav *Mahler at the Vienna 
Opera and subsequently conducted operas in Berlin, Prague, 
and Mannheim. In 1915 he was engaged by the Metropolitan 
Opera, New York, as conductor of their German repertory 
and held this position until his death. His repertory included 
Gluck, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Meyerbeer, Suppe and 
the American premieres of Weinberger s Svanda the Bag- 
piper and Kreneks Jonny spielt auf. He excelled in conducting 
Wagner but was also a symphony conductor. He was music 
director of the Society of Friends of Music in New York from 
1916 until 1931. 

add. bibliography: Grove online; mgg 2 . 

[Israela Stein (2 nd ed.)] 

BODEK, JACOB (1819-1855), Galician Hebraist. Bodek was 
born in Lemberg. He and his brother-in-law, A.M. *Mohr, 
were two of the maskilim in Lemberg who published a journal 
entitled Ha-Roeh u-Mevakker Sifrei Mehabberei Zemannenu 
("Criticism of the works of Contemporary Authors," 1838-39), 
criticizing the works of S.J. Rapoport, S.D. Luzzatto, and I.S. 
Reggio. He and Mohr later edited a periodical called Yerush- 
alayim (1844-45) to which many Galician maskilim contrib- 
uted. Bodek published biblical commentaries and translations 
of poetry in the periodical Kokhevei Yizhak. His letters, which 
contain valuable material on the historical and cultural back- 
ground of the early 19 th century, were printed after his death 
in Ha-Boker Or, Ha-Shahar, and other journals. 

bibliography: Klausner, Sifrut, 2 (1952 ), index; G. Bader, 

Medinah va-Hakhameha (1934), 33. 

[Getzel Kressel] 

BODENHEIM, MAXWELL (1893-1954), U.S. poet and nov- 
elist. Born in Mississippi, Bodenheim was raised in poverty. 
He moved to New York, where he first attracted attention with 
his book of verses Minna and Myself (1918). He continued his 
experiments in free verse with five other volumes. The sup- 
pression of his first novel, Replenishing Jessica (1925), on the 
grounds that it was immoral brought him temporary notoriety. 
His novels of New Yorks seamy side, such as Naked on Roller 
Skates (1931) and New York Madness (1933), endeared him to 
radical circles. Bodenheim never shunned unpopular causes 



and continued to pioneer the treatment of unconventional 
themes. His anguished "Poem to the Gentiles" (1944) cast 
doubt on the sincerity of many non-Jewish protests against 
Nazi barbarism. Bodenheims last days were again spent in 
poverty. He was murdered by a psychopathic ex-convict. 

bibliography: J. Mersand, Traditions in American Literature 
(1939), 133-6; S. Liptzin, Jew in American Literature (1966), 140-1. 

[Sol Liptzin] 

BODENHEIMER, FREDERICK SIMON (1897-1959), Israel 
zoologist. The son of Max Isidor *Bodenheimer, he was born 
in Cologne, and completed his studies in biology at Bonn in 
1921. In 1922 he was appointed entomologist in the new agri- 
cultural experimental station of the Jewish Agency in Tel Aviv, 
where he worked until 1928. In 1927 Bodenheimer carried out 
an expedition to the Sinai Peninsula. Important among the 
results of this expedition was his identification of the biblical 
manna as the honeydew excretion of scale-insects on tamarisk. 
In 1928 he was appointed research fellow and in 1931 profes- 
sor of zoology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 
1938 to 1941 he was visiting professor at Ankara and consul- 
tant to the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture. In 1943 he was 
invited to Iraq to serve as entomological adviser on locust 
control. In addition to his specialty of agricultural entomol- 
ogy, Bodenheimer s broader biological interests were animal 
ecology, population dynamics, and the history of science. He 
was the author of many articles and numerous books, includ- 
ing Die Schaedlingsfauna Palaestinas (1930); Materialien zur 
Geschichte der Entomologie bis Linne (2 vols., 1928-29); Ani- 
mal Life in Palestine (1935); Problems of Animal Ecology (1938); 
Animal and Man in Bible Lands (i960); Citrus Entomology in 
the Middle East... (1951); The History of Biology: an Introduc- 
tion (1958); and Animal Ecology Today (1958). His last book, 
A Biologist in Israel (1959), is an autobiography. 

[Mordecai L. Gabriel] 

BODENHEIMER, MAX ISIDOR (1865-1940), one of 
*HerzPs first assistants, a founder of the World Zionist Orga- 
nization, and one of the first directors of the * Jewish National 
Fund. Bodenheimer was born in Stuttgart and began to prac- 
tice law in Cologne in 1890. Despite an assimilationist educa- 
tion, he joined the *Hibbat Zion movement in his youth. In 
1891 he published a pamphlet, Wohin mit den russischen Juden? 
in which he suggested settling Russian Jews in Erez Israel. In 
1893 he and David * Wolff sohn founded in Cologne a Hibbat 
Zion society which was the nucleus of the future Zionist Fed- 
eration in Germany. When Herzl announced his Zionist plans, 
Bodenheimer joined him immediately. At the First Zionist 
Congress in 1897 he presented the organizational program of 
the Zionist movement, and was a member of the committee 
which prepared the text of the *Basle Program. From 1897 
to 1921 and from 1931 to 1933 Bodenheimer was a member of 
the Zionist General Council. In 1898 he was a member of the 
Zionist delegation which accompanied Herzl to Erez Israel for 
an audience with Kaiser William 11 on his visit there. Boden- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



27 



BODENSCHATZ, JOHANN CHRISTOPH GEORG 



heimer put the statutes of the Jewish National Fund into final 
form and served as its director from 1907 to 1914. The land 
on which Kinneret, Deganyah, and Merhavyah were built was 
among that acquired during his administration; and assistance 
was also given for urban and rural settlement, including a loan 
to help found Tel Aviv. During World War 1 Bodenheimer to- 
gether with Franz *Oppenheimer and Adolph *Friedemann 
founded the Vaad le-Ma'an ha-Mizrah ("Committee for the 
East"), which aimed at serving as a liaison between East Euro- 
pean Jewry and the German occupation authorities. He joined 
the ^Revisionist Movement (1931-34) but left when it seceded 
from the World Zionist Organization. In 1935 Bodenheimer 
settled in Jerusalem. He published many pamphlets and arti- 
cles on Zionist matters, and wrote a drama on the life of Jesus 
(1933). His memoirs appeared posthumously in Hebrew (1952), 
German (1958), and in English under the title Prelude to Israel 
(1963). His daughter, Hannah, published his correspondence 
with Hermann Shapira, Toledot Tokhnit Basel ("The History 
of the Basle Program," 1947), and that between him and Herzl 
in Hebrew and German, under the title Be-Reshit ha-Tenuah 
("At the Beginning of the Movement," 1965). A selection of his 
writings, Bi-Mesillat Rishonim, was published in 1951. 

bibliography: T. Herzl, Complete Diaries, ed. by R. Patai, 5 
vols, (i960), index; S. Ben-Horin, Hamishim Shenot Ziyyonut, Max 
Bodenheimer (1946); H. Bodenheimer, Herzl Yearbook, 6 (1964-65), 
153-81; R. Lichtheim, Die Geschichte des deutschen Zionismus (1954), 
index. 

[Alexander Bein] 

°BODENSCHATZ, JOHANN CHRISTOPH GEORG 

(1717-1797), German Protestant theologian. Born in Hof, Ba- 
varia, Bodenschatz received his early education at Gera, where 
through his teacher Schleusner he became interested in bibli- 
cal and Oriental subjects, later studying Oriental languages at 
the University of Jena. He entered the church, became vicar 
at Uttenreuth, and in 1780 superintendent at Baiersdorf. In 
his writings Bodenschatz described contemporary Jewish 
customs in Germany faithfully and without prejudice. His 
Kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden, sonderlich derer in 
Deutschland (4 vols., Erlangen and Coburg, 1748-49), is an 
important historical source for Jewish life in Germany in the 
mid-i8 th century. A second edition of the book was published 
in Frankfurt in 1756 under the title Aufrichtig teutsch reden- 
der Hebraeer. Both editions are rich in engravings depicting 
subjects drawn from contemporary Jewish life in Germany. 
Some of these engravings were taken from B. Picarts Cere- 
monies et coutum.es religieuses de tous les peuples (1723-37). 
Bodenschatz is said to have made elaborate models of Noahs 
Ark and the Tabernacle. 

bibliography: adb, 3 (1876), 7; I. Abrahams, By-Paths in 
Hebraic Bookland (1920), 160-5. 

BODIAN, DAVID (1910-2002), U.S. anatomist. Born in St. 
Louis, Bodian received his Ph.D. in anatomy in 1934 and his 
M.D. in 1937 from the University of Chicago. He came to the 



Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1939 as a re- 
search fellow in anatomy. The following year, Bodian was an 
assistant professor of anatomy at Western Reserve University 
School of Medicine. He returned to Johns Hopkins in 1942 as 
a lecturer in anatomy in the school of medicine and assistant 
professor of epidemiology in the school of public health. In 
1957, Bodian became professor of anatomy and the director 
of the anatomy department in the school of medicine. Along 
with his colleagues, Howard Howe and Isabelle Mountain 
Morgan, Bodian helped lay the groundwork for the *Salk and 
*Sabin polio vaccines through their research into the neuro- 
pathology of poliomyelitis. Bodian's team demonstrated that 
the polio virus that was transmitted through the mouth and 
digestive tract was in fact three distinct types of virus, and they 
showed that antibodies to the virus were carried through the 
bloodstream, demonstrating that for a vaccine to be effective 
it must include antibodies recognizing all three types of virus. 
Bodians group also developed early poliomyelitis vaccines - 
first a formalin-treated vaccine that successfully immunized 
monkeys, and then another that significantly elevated the lev- 
els of antibodies in children. In addition, Bodian developed a 
technique to stain nerve fibers and nerve endings (named the 
Bodian stain) and made major contributions to the knowledge 
of the basic structure of nerve cells. Bodian was elected to the 
U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1958. In his memory, 
the International Post-Polio Task Force presents the David 
Bodian Memorial Award every year to persons whose activi- 
ties benefit polio survivors. 

[Ruth Rossing (2 nd ed.)] 

°BODIN, JEAN (1529 or 1530-1596), French historian, econ- 
omist, and jurist. Bodin took an interest in Judaism in his 
main works De Republica (1576) and Methodus adfacilem his- 
toriarum cognitionem (1566), but chiefly in a work which he 
had completed in 1593 but did not publish, Colloquium Hep- 
taplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis (excerpts first 
printed in 1841; complete edition 1857). Thanks to the help of 
three "royal readers" of Hebrew at the College of France in 
Paris, Cinqarbres, Jean *Mercier, and Paradis, Bodin not only 
acquired some knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic but also 
had translations made of many passages from Hebrew litera- 
ture, which he used in his works. He referred to the Targum, 
talmudic authorities, kabbalistic literature, and many medieval 
writers. The Heptaplomeres contains six conversations between 
seven friends who represented as many religions or attitudes 
of belief. Toralba, the representative of natural religion, and 
Solomon Barcassius, the representative of Judaism, are both 
to some degree the spokesmen of Bodin himself. To Bodin, 
the Jews were not only the most ancient people but also the 
most faithful chroniclers of the earliest history of humanity. 
Bodin inserted into his dialogues a series of Jewish objections 
to Christianity which he reinforced with his own dialectical 
skill. Through the interpellations of Solomon he attacked the 
dogma of the virgin birth. Everything profitable in the writings 
of the apostles was borrowed from Judaism. The Christians 



28 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BODMER, SIR WALTER 



violated the precepts of the Decalogue, which was neverthe- 
less the natural law par excellence. Critics accused Bodin of 
having lost the faith of a real Christian through his dealings 
with the Jews (although he does not appear to have had any), 
and called him a half- Jew or secret Jew. This was presumably 
the source of the baseless supposition that his mother was of 
Jewish origin. 

bibliography: Guttmann, in: mgwj, 49 (1905), 315 ff., 459 ff.; 
Berg, in: Revue juive de Lorraine, 13 (1937), 29 ff.; G. Roellenbleck, Of- 
fenbarung... undjuedische Ueberlieferung bei Jean Bodin (1964). 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

BODKY, ERWIN (1896-1958), harpsichordist. Born in 
Germany, from 1922 to 1933 Bodky was lecturer at various 
Berlin music institutions. In 1933 he emigrated to Amsterdam, 
and in 1938 settled in the United States, where he became a 
lecturer at the Long School of Music, Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts. In 1949 he was appointed professor at Brandeis Uni- 
versity, Waltham, Massachusetts. He helped to revive inter- 
est in harpsichord playing and the performance of baroque 
keyboard music. 

BODLEIAN LIBRARY, the official library of the University 
of Oxford, named after Sir Thomas *Bodley who refounded 
it. It is one of the worlds greatest libraries, and second in im- 
portance in England only to the British Museum. 

There were Hebrew books and manuscripts in Bod- 
leys original collection, supplemented gradually by gift and 
purchase in the course of the next two centuries: especially 
memorable were those from the collections of Archbishop 
William Laud (1641), John Selden (1654, 1659), Edward Po- 
cocke (1691), Robert Huntingdon (1693). In 1829, the Uni- 
versity of Oxford purchased for the Bodleian the whole of 
the fine collection that had formerly belonged to David 
*Oppenheim, and the library immediately rose to first rank 
among the Hebrew collections of the world. Later, there were 
added also the collection of the Hamburg bibliophile Heimann 
Joseph Michael in 1848, many manuscripts from the collec- 
tion of Isaac Samuel Reggio in 1853, and in due course large 
numbers of fragments from the Cairo Genizah. The Library 
now comprises about 3,100 Hebrew and Samaritan manu- 
scripts - still perhaps qualitatively the most important in 
the world - as well as a remarkably full collection of early 
printed works. The manuscripts have been described fully in 
the catalog (vol. 1, ed. by A. Neubauer, 1886; vol. 11, ed. by A. 
Cowley, 1906). In 1994 a "Supplement of Addenda and Corri- 
genda" to the catalog was printed. The printed books formed 
the material for M. Steinschneider s fundamental work of 
Hebrew bibliography (Catalogus Librorum Hebraeorum in 
Bibliotheca Bodleiana, 1852-60) - not, however, restricted to 
books - and of the more succinct recent catalog edited by A. 
Cowley (1929). 

bibliography: E.N. Adler, in: jhset, 8 (198), 2S. 

[Cecil Roth] 



°BODLEY, SIR THOMAS (1544/45-1613), English diplomat 
and bibliophile. Born in Exeter, England, his education began 
in the Geneva of Calvin and Beza (Beze) as a Protestant refu- 
gee from the Marian persecution. There he learned Hebrew 
from Chevalier, later continuing his study under Drusius at 
Oxford. He acquired sufficient competence both to teach He- 
brew and to decipher a medieval Anglo-Jewish shetar. Bodley 
traveled widely on the continent, largely on diplomatic mis- 
sions, and was Elizabeths permanent resident at The Hague 
from 1589 to 1596. His quite considerable Hebrew expertise 
is reflected in the elegy which he contributed to the me- 
morial volume for Bishop John Jewell of Salisbury (Ioannis 
luelli... Episcopi Sarisbuniensis vita et mors (London, 1573)), 
in which there occur post-biblical Hebrew terms as applied in 
Italy and elsewhere to the Catholic hierarchy (afifyor, "pope"; 
hashmannim, "cardinals"; hegmon, "bishop"; etc.). Bodleys 
fame rests upon his munificent restoration of Oxford s public 
(i.e., university) library, thereafter called the *Bodleian. 

bibliography: G.W. Wheeler (ed.), Letters of Sir Thomas 
Bodley to Thomas James (1926); C. Roth, in: Bodleian Library Record 7, 
(1966), 2421!.; idem, in: Oxoniensia, 15 (1950), 64L; Trecentale Bodleia- 
num (1913), includes The Life of Sir Thomas Bodley Written by Himself 
(London, 1703). add. bibliography: odnb online. 

[Raphael Loewe] 

BODMER, SIR WALTER (1936- ), British geneticist. Bod- 
mer was born in Frankfurt am Main and emigrated to Man- 
chester with his family because of Nazi persecution. He was 
educated at Manchester Grammar School and read math- 
ematics at Cambridge University before gaining his Ph.D. in 
statistics under R.F. Fisher. He was a member of the universi- 
ty s genetics department and a fellow of Clare College before 
moving to Stanford University, Calif., to work with Joshua 
*Lederberg, where he became professor of genetics (1968). 
He returned to the U.K. as professor of genetics at Oxford 
University (1970 -79) before his appointment as director of 
research followed by appointment as director general of the 
Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London (icrf) (1979-96). 
In 1996 he returned to Oxford as head of the icrf Cancer and 
Immuno gene tics Laboratory at the Oxford Institute of Mo- 
lecular Medicine and principal of Hertford College. He was 
chancellor of Salford University from 1995. Sir Walters initial 
research on theoretical genetics moved to biological issues 
and especially to disease susceptibility. He and his wife, juli a 
(1934- ), made major contributions to understanding the hu- 
man system of tissue markers known as the hla system. He 
was an early advocate of applying dna technology to detecting 
disease susceptibility. Subsequently he used gene mutations to 
detect those at risk from bowel cancer. He continued to work 
on biological aspects of population genetics. Sir Walter made 
vital contributions to international collaboration in studying 
genetics and to the human genome project, aims furthered 
by his term as president of the Human Genome Organization 
(hugo) (1990-92). His book The Book of Man (1995) made 
modern genetics and its implications generally accessible. His 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



29 



BODO 



many honors include election to the Royal Society (1994) and 
a knighthood (1986). He was a foreign associate of the U.S. Na- 
tional Academy of Science. Sir Walter was a strong supporter 
of Israeli science and scientific institutions. 

[Michael Denman (2 nd ed.)] 

BODO (ninth century), French churchman who became a 
proselyte to Judaism. The scion of a noble family, Bodo entered 
the church and became deacon of the palace to Louis the Pi- 
ous. In 838 he left the court with a numerous suite ostensibly 
to go on pilgrimage to Rome. He instead went to Spain with 
his nephew and on his way adopted Judaism under the name 
Eleazar. After spending some time in Saragossa he went on 
to Cordoba, where he is said to have attempted to persuade 
the caliph to compel his Christian subjects to abandon their 
faith in favor of either Judaism or Islam. The details of his 
career are known mainly through the interchange of cor- 
respondence between him and a learned Christian layman 
of Cordoba, Paolo Alvaro. Alvaro wrote him four polemical 
letters, printed in various ecclesiastical collections, attempt- 
ing to convince him of the error of his ways. Bodo-Eleazar's 
rejoinders and arguments were deliberately destroyed, be- 
ing taken out of the codex in which they were copied, but B. 
Blumenkranz has reconstructed them from the quotations in 
Alvaros letters. 

bibliography: CM. Sage, Paul Alb ar of Cordoba (1943); 
Cabaniss, in: jqr, 43 (1952/53), 313-28; B. Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chre- 
tiens dans le monde occidental (i960), 166 ff. and index; idem, in: 
rhpr, 34 (1954), 401-13; idem, in: rej, 112 (1953), 35-42; Roth, Dark 
Ages, index. 

[Cecil Roth] 

BODROGKERESZTUR, town in Borsod (in 1944 Zemplen) 
county, northeastern Hungary. The census of 1723-24 records 
seven Jewish families who settled there from Poland. The Jew- 
ish population ranged from 58 in 1746 and 336 in 1880 to 535 
in 1930. According to the census of 1941, the last before the 
Holocaust, the town had a Jewish population of 455, repre- 
senting 20.2% of the total of 2,248. The Jews were mainly mer- 
chants, tradesmen, innkeepers, and freight carters. Located in 
the Tokay district, the town also boasted a number of Jewish 
vintners. The community was organized toward the end of the 
18 th century, when it also organized a hevra kaddisha and a 
Jewish cemetery. The first synagogue was built in 1767; it was 
replaced by a new one after a fire in 1906. The congregation 
identified itself as Orthodox in 1868-69. I n 1885, the Jewish 
community of Bodrogkeresztur was joined by the neighbor- 
ing smaller communities, including those of Bodrogkisfalud 
and Bodrogszegi. Many of the Jews were hasidic and had their 
own synagogue. A Jewish elementary school was established in 
1784, but after a few years was replaced by a heder and talmud 
torah. Among the rabbis who served the Jewish community 
were Lazar London (1780-96), Izrael Wahrmann, Abraham 
Tannenbaum, Levi Hirsch Glanc (1826), grandson of Moses 
*Teitelbaum, whose influence in the community made it a 



stronghold of Hasidism. His grave is still a place of pilgrimage. 
Also serving the community were Rabbi Moses Elias, Rabbi 
Mozes Schlesinger, and Shaye Steiner (d. 1925). The latter, gen- 
erally known as Reb Shayele, was revered as a miracle-work- 
ing rabbi. The last rabbi was Chaim Schlesinger, Mozes s son, 
who perished during the Holocaust. The last secular head of 
the community was Jozsef Seidenfeld, a merchant. 

During World War 11, the Jews were subjected to dra- 
conic anti- Jewish measures; they were deprived of their live- 
lihood and many among the males were recruited for forced 
labor. After the German occupation of Hungary (March 19, 
1944), the Jews were rounded up (April 16-17). They were first 
concentrated in a local ghetto consisting of the synagogue and 
the adjacent community buildings, where they were deprived 
of their last possessions. After a few days they were trans- 
ferred to the ghetto of Satoraljaujhely, from where they were 
deported to Auschwitz on May 25. 

After the war the community consisted of 37 survivors. 
Their number grew to 63 by 1949, but all of them relocated to 
larger communities or emigrated a few years later. 

bibliography: M. Stein, Magyar Rabbik, 1 (1905), 3-5; 
Vadasz, in: Magyar Zsido Szemle, 24 (1907), 328; Uj Elet, 20 (1964), 9; 
J. Mosolygo, Tokaj (1930); mhj, 7 (1963), 102, 642, 837. add. bibli- 
ography: pk Hungaria, 221-23. 

[Laszlo Harsanyi / Randolph Braham (2 nd ed.)] 

BODY AND SOUL. Judaisms view of man as the crown of 
a "very good" creation entails a positive attitude towards the 
body, which is to be guided by the soul so as to sanctify the 
physical. The Bible appreciates physical prowess and beauty, 
while regulating sexual behavior and forbidding physical mu- 
tilation. Its laws of purity and impurity govern relations be- 
tween the sexes and impose a sequestered posture on women 
periodically. Partially for this reason, the female body in rab- 
binic eyes came to be viewed negatively, its beauty having to 
be kept hidden in public. 

Jewish theology has no clearly elaborated views on the 
relationship between body and soul, nor on the nature of the 
soul itself. Apart from Jewish philosophical and kabbalistic 
literature on the subject (see *Soul), the major traditional 
sources for any normative doctrines are the various texts in 
talmudic and midrashic literature. These latter are not sys- 
tematic, nor is their interpretation generally agreed on. The 
talmudic rabbis, as opposed to certain Jewish philosophers of 
the medieval period, never considered views on such a purely 
theoretical subject as important. Their interest was focused on 
the connected, but more practically orientated beliefs, such as 
in the resurrection of the body and Gods future judgment. 
For the talmudic rabbis the soul is, in some sense, clearly sep- 
arable from the body: God breathed the soul into the body 
of Adam (Gen. 2:7; Ta'an. 22b). During sleep the soul departs 
and draws spiritual refreshment from on high (Gen. R. 14:9). 
At death it leaves the body only to be united with it again at 
the resurrection (Sanh. 9ob-9ia). As a prayer of the morning 
liturgy, uttered on awakening, expresses it: "O my God, the 



30 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOEHM, YOHANAN 



soul which thou gavest me is pure; thou didst create it, thou 
didst form it, thou didst breathe it into me. Thou preservest 
it within me, and thou wilt take it from me, but wilt restore it 
unto me hereafter" (Hertz, Prayer, 19). 

Whether the soul is capable of living an independent, 
fully conscious existence away from the body after death is 
unclear from rabbinic sources. The Midrash puts it somewhat 
vaguely - that the body cannot survive without the soul -nor 
the soul without the body (cf. Tanh. Va-Yikra 11). Although 
a view is found maintaining that the soul after death is in a 
quiescent state (Shab. 152b), the predominant view seems to 
be that the soul is capable of having a fully conscious life of 
its own when disembodied (see, for instance, Ket. 77b; Ber. 
18b- 19 a). It is even maintained that the soul pre-exists the 
body (Hag. 12b); but how this predominant view is to be in- 
terpreted is problematic. Since the various anecdotes and de- 
scriptions about the soul in its disembodied state are given in 
terms of physical imagery, it might be assumed that an ethe- 
real body was ascribed to the soul, enabling it to parallel the 
most important functions of its embodied state when disem- 
bodied. This assumption is unwarranted, however, since the 
rabbis do not seek conceptual coherence in their theological 
speculation. Imagery has a homiletic, rather than a specula- 
tive, function. 

The elliptical and practically oriented aspect of rabbinic 
teaching is brought out further in the view that the soul is a 
guest in the body here on earth (Lev. R. 34:3), for this means 
that the body must be respected and well treated for the sake 
of its honored guest. The Gnostic idea of the body as a prison 
of the soul is absent from rabbinic literature; body and soul 
form a harmonious unity. Just as God fills the world, sees 
but is not seen, so the soul fills the body, sees but is not seen 
(Ber. 10a). On the eve of the Sabbath God gives each man an 
extra soul, which He takes back at its termination (Bez. 16a). 
This is the rabbinic way of emphasizing the spirituality of the 
soul, its closeness in nature to God, and the extra spiritual- 
ity with which it is imbued on the Sabbath. The soul is pure 
as God is pure; its introduction into the human embryo is 
Gods part in the ever-renewed creation of human life (Nid. 
31a). Because God originally gave man his soul, it is for God 
to take it away and not man himself. Thus *suicide, ^euthana- 
sia, and anything which would hasten death is forbidden (Job 
1:21; Av. Zar. 18a and Tos.; Sh. Ar. yd 345). If man safeguards 
the purity of his soul by walking in the ways of the Torah, all 
will be well, but if not God will take his soul from him (Nid. 
31a). For his sins, which contaminate the soul, man will be 
judged; indeed his soul will be his accuser. Nor can the body 
plead that it was the soul which sinned, nor the soul blame 
the body, for at the resurrection God will return soul to body 
and judge them as one. 

Theological considerations aside, the rabbis of the Tal- 
mud prescribed regimens of cleanliness, moderation, and 
medical care for the body. It was viewed primarily as a reli- 
gious instrument: "One should wash his face, hands, and feet 
every day out of respect for His maker" (Shab.5ob). 



Medieval Jewish philosophers studied the body with the 
aid of Aristotle and Galen primarily, and appreciated its role 
in ethical behavior and in the sensory stages of learning. Ul- 
timate human perfection, however, lay in the cultivation of 
one's intellect, often loosely called "soul." The relative devalua- 
tion of the body, in comparison with the soul, in rabbinic and 
philosophical circles was countered by a strong assertion of 
corporeal images and actions among Jewish mystics. In mod- 
ern times, Labor Zionism was known for its celebration of the 
body's ability to perform physical labor. 

bibliography: K. Kohler, Jewish Theology (1918), 212-7; 
G.F. Moore, Judaism (1946), 485-8; 2 (1946), index; A. Marmorstein, 
Studies in Jewish Theology (1950), 145-61; L. Finkelstein, in: Free- 
dom and Reason (1951), 354-71; J- Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism 
(1964) 109, 137-40; G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 
(1967), 63-67, 99. 

[Alfred L. Ivry (2 nd ed.)] 

BOEHM, ADOLF (1873-1941), Zionist and historian of the 
Zionist movement. When he was still a child Boehm's family 
moved from his birthplace in Teplitz-Schonau (Teplice), Bohe- 
mia, to Vienna where he received his early education. Boehm 
entered his father's textile factory, which he directed until 1938. 
His association with the Zionist movement began only after 
Herzl's death in 1904. Following his visit to Erez Israel in 1907, 
he became a leader of the "practical" Zionists, whose inter- 
est lay primarily in the economic problems connected with 
Jewish settlement in Palestine. As a result he was particularly 
active on behalf of the Jewish National Fund. He served for 
ten years on its board of directors and wrote a book on its 
activities. During 1910-12, and again during 1927-38 Boehm 
edited the monthly Palaestina. His major effort, however, was 
Die Zionistische Bewegung (1922, enlarged two-volume edi- 
tion 1935-37) which remains the most exhaustive history of 
the Zionist movement. In the second edition he brought the 
history up to 1925. Boehm collected extensive material for a 
third volume which, however, was never published. Boehm 
strongly objected to the excessive factionalism within the 
Zionist movement. At the same time he stressed the impor- 
tance of the connection between Jewish national and univer- 
sal human values in a series of articles in Juedische Rundschau 
(1934, nos. 43, 65, 67). Shortly after Hitler's occupation of Aus- 
tria Boehm fell victim to a mental disorder. He is believed to 
have died in a Nazi extermination center in Poland. 



bibliography: Beanakh ha-Binyan le-Zekher A. Boehm 



(1952). 



BOEHM, YOHANAN (1914-1986), Israel composer, horn- 
player, and music critic. Born in Breslau, Germany, Boehm im- 
migrated to Palestine in 1936. He taught at the Jerusalem Mu- 
sic Academy and was music program editor and tone master 
at the Israel Broadcasting Service and the World Zionist Or- 
ganization Broadcasting Service for the Diaspora (Kol Ziyyon 
la-Golah). He composed songs, chamber music, and sympho- 
nies in a late romantic style, wrote articles on music, was a con- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



31 



BOERNE, LUDWIG 



tributor to the Encyclopaedia Judaica> and served as the music 
critic for the Jerusalem Post. Boehm founded the Jerusalem 
Youth Orchestra in 1959 and directed it for 20 years. He was 
music advisor to the Jerusalem municipality and was a jury 
member of the International Harp Contest in Israel. 

[Ury Eppstein (2 nd ed.)] 

BOERNE, LUDWIG (1786-1837), German political essayist 
and champion of Jewish emancipation. Born Loeb Baruch, 
into a prominent Frankfurt banking family, he was raised in 
the Frankfurt ghetto. Since medicine was one of the few pro- 
fessions then open to Jews, he was sent to Berlin in 1802 to 
study under Markus *Herz. After his masters death in 1803 
he abandoned medicine and went to study political science at 
Halle and Heidelberg. He received his doctorate from Gies- 
sen University in 1808. In 1811 Boerne became an official in 
the Frankfurt police department; but when the anti-Jewish 
restrictions of the pre -Napoleonic era were reimposed after 
Bonaparte's defeat in 1815, he was dismissed. In the following 
years of political restoration, Boerne became an ardent advo- 
cate of the idea of political freedom. His thought developed 
from classical early liberal ideas to somewhat "neo-Jacobin" 
notions of freedom. 

In 1818 Boerne converted to Lutheranism, not out of re- 
ligious conviction but to open the door to wider public activ- 
ity, and adopted the name by which he was known thereafter. 
In the same year he founded the periodical Die Waage. This 
journal was ostensibly devoted to art, literature, and social gos- 
sip and Boerne earned a reputation with his witty theatrical 
criticism. But, as a master of innuendo, he managed to inject 
subversive political allusions into the most harmless subjects. 
In his feuille tons, of which he was a pioneer, he scourged the 
bureaucracy of Frankfurt and ridiculed the whole pompous 
political structure of Central Europe. He soon ran into diffi- 
culties with the political authorities, and in 1821 gave up the 
editorship of Die Waage. 

In 1830 constant police interference compelled Boerne 
to transfer his activities to Paris, where he was generally re- 
garded as the leader of the political emigres. His Brief e aus 
Paris (1830-1833), described by Heine as "paperbound sun- 
beams," were literary bullets fired across the German border 
with the aim of drawing public attention to glaring injus- 
tices. Boernes influence reached its zenith in 1832, when he 
participated in the Hambach Festival, a gathering of 30,000 
liberals from German-speaking states. He allied himself for 
a time with the influential but conservative Stuttgart editor 
Wolfgang Menzel, in the struggle against the idealization of 
Goethe by the Romanticists. But when Menzel espoused an- 
tisemitism and induced the German Federal Diet in 1835 to 
ban the works of Young Germany (a group of writers holding 
liberal views on politics and society), Boerne published his 
vitriolic diatribe, Menzel der Franzosenfresser (1838), a mas- 
terpiece of wit and irony. 

Sensitive to the Jewish problem, Boerne wanted to be 
thought of as an individual apart from his Jewishness, and was 



chagrined when his utterances were attributed to his heredity. 
The idea that the freedom of mankind as a whole is inextrica- 
bly bound up with freedom for the Jews recurs constantly in 
his writings, and he refused to acknowledge the existence of 
a Jewish problem distinct from the general issue of emancipa- 
tion. Boerne held that the Jewish mission had been to teach the 
world cosmopolitanism and that the Jewish nation had disap- 
peared in the most enviable manner; it had merged with man- 
kind as a whole and had given birth to Christian idealism. On 
Boernes death, Heine published an uncomplimentary study 
entitled Ueber Ludwig Boerne (1840), in which he expressed 
resentment against his erstwhile fellow liberal. This provoked 
Karl Gutzkows defense of Boerne as a maligned German pa- 
triot and led to an extended controversy. Many years later, 
the old Frankfurt Judengasse where he had lived was renamed 
"Boernestrasse" in his honor and, throughout the 19 th century, 
Boerne and Heine were regarded as the major Jewish influ- 
ences in German literature. Boernes Saemtliche Schriften (let- 
ters and writings) were edited in 1964-68. 

bibliography: L. Marcuse, Revolutionaer und Patriot; das 
Leben Ludwig Boernes (1929). add. bibliography: W. Jasper, 
Ludwig Boerne (Ger., 1989); R. Heuer (ed.), Lexikon deutsch-juedi- 
scher Autoren, 3 (1995), 255-70; J.S. Chase, Inciting Laughter (1999); 
F. Stern and M. Gierlinger (eds.)> Ludwig Boerne. Deutscher, Jude, 
Demokrat (2003). 

[Sol Liptzin / Marcus Pyka (2 nd ed.)] 

°BOESCHENSTEIN, JOHANN (1472-1540), German He- 
braist. He was born in Esslingen, and many scholars (such 
as Wolf, Joecher, Steinschneider, Pedes) believed him to be 
of Jewish parentage, although Boeschenstein himself denied 
this. With Reuchlin, Boeschenstein was a pioneer of Hebraic 
studies among Christians in Germany. He himself was a He- 
brew teacher in several German cities (Ingolstadt, Augsburg, 
Regensburg) until invited (1518) by Melanchthon to become 
professor of Hebrew at the University of Wittenberg. Later he 
moved to Heidelberg and then to Augsburg, Antwerp, Zur- 
ich, Augsburg, and Nuremberg (1525). He died in great pro- 
verty at Noerdlingen. Among his students were the noted 
theologians Johann Eck, and Ulrich Zwingli. Boeschenstein 
published works on Hebrew grammar: Elementale introduc- 
torium in hebreas litteras teutonice ethebraice legendas (1514, 
rev. ed. 1518, 1520, 1530) and Hebraicae Grammaticae Institutio- 
ns (Wittenberg, 1518). He also edited a Latin edition of Moses 
Kimhi s Mahalakh Shevilei ha-Daat entitled Rudimenta Hebra- 
ica (1520) and German translations of general Jewish prayers 
(c. 1523) and of Grace after Meals (c. 1536). 

bibliography: Wolf, Bibliotheca, 4 (1733), 840; J. Perles, 
Beitraege zur Geschichte der hebraeischen und aramaeischen Studien 
(1884), 27f., 3of.; M. Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Handschriften 
Muenchen (18952), nos. 72, 259, 329, 401. add. bibliography: Th. 
Wiedemann, in: O ester reichische Vierteljahresschrift fiir katholische 
Theologie, 2 (1863), 70-88; Steinschneider, in: zhb, 2, no. 112 (1897), 
53-54; E. Werner in: Historia Judaica, 16 (1954), 46-54. 

[Chaim M. Rabin / Giulio Busi (2 nd ed.)] 



32 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOETHUSIANS 



BOESKY, IVAN FREDERICK (1937- ), U.S. entrepreneur, 
philanthropist. Born in Detroit, the son of immigrants from 
Czarist Russia, Boesky rose to become one of the most success- 
ful arbitrageurs in the 1980s among private, professional Wall 
Street traders, only to run afoul of securities laws, for which 
he paid a $100 million fine and served 22 months in prison 
after agreeing to become a government informant, particu- 
larly against Michael *Milken. Boesky amassed a fortune by 
betting on corporate takeovers. Investigated by the Securities 
and Exchange Commission for receiving tips from corporate 
insiders, and then making investments accordingly, Boesky 
made brazen purchases, sometimes two or three days before 
the company announced it would be acquired. Insider trad- 
ing of this type was illegal but rarely enforced. As part of his 
guilty plea, he agreed not to trade again. Boesky gave exten- 
sively to charities, particularly Jewish causes, and for two years 
ending in 1985 he was general chairman of United Jewish Ap- 
peal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. 

In Detroit, Boeskys father, William, owned a chain of 
bars called the Brass Rail. Ivan attended a prestigious prep 
school outside Detroit, Cranbrook. He moved to New York 
in 1966 and worked at a series of brokerages. By 1972, con- 
vinced that arbitrage was the road to great wealth, he joined 
Edwards & Hanley, an old Wall Street firm, which asked him 
to create an arbitrage department. It soon became the com- 
pany's largest profit center. Arbitrage, which involves buy- 
ing a company's stock when it becomes a takeover target, is 
highly risky, and Boesky took the firm to the edge. In 1975 it 
declared bankruptcy. 

That year Boesky opened Ivan F. Boesky & Company 
with $700,000 in capital, most of it thought to have come from 
his wife's family, and three years later he reorganized as the 
Ivan F. Boesky Corporation, whose assets in 1984 totaled 
more than $500 million. He advertised for investors in the 
Wall Street Journal and allocated just 55 percent of the op- 
eration's profits to the investors, keeping 45 percent for him- 
self. He assigned investors 95 percent of any losses. As the 
man reputed to be the richest and most powerful arbitrageur 
of modern times, according to the New York Times, Boesky 
was universally feared on Wall Street. In 1986 Boesky wrote 
Merger Mania - Arbitrage: Wall Streets Best-Kept Money- 
Making Secret. 

Boesky became a close associate of Michael Milken. 
Milken, working for the investment bank Drexel Burnham 
Lambert, became known as the junk-bond king: he pio- 
neered the financing of companies with high-yield, or junk, 
debt. Milken believed that precisely because such bonds were 
shunned they offered exceptional value. Milken found buy- 
ers and his investors made handsome returns. Not all those 
profits were made ethically or legally, as insiders swapped 
privileged information and others favors freely. Boeskys ex- 
cesses and take -no -prisoners attitude were epitomized in a 
phrase he delivered in a speech in 1986: "Greed is good," he 
said. The financial crimes of the 1980s inspired Oliver *Stone's 
movie Wall Street the following year. Its high-powered arbi- 



trageur, Gordon Gekko, portrayed by Michael ^Douglas, re- 
peats Boeskys phrase. 

For Boesky, who lived lavishly on a 188-acre estate in 
upstate New York purchased from John *Revson of the Rev- 
Ion cosmetics family, things started to unravel on Nov. 14, 
1986. That day federal prosecutors disclosed that Boesky had 
pleaded guilty to charges of insider trading and had agreed 
to pay a fine of $100 million. He had also agreed to cooperate 
in the ongoing government investigations. Nov. 14 came to be 
known on Wall Street as Boesky Day. 

In addition to his market activities, Boesky was known 
for his philanthropies. He became a member of the chairman's 
council after giving $25,000 to the Metropolitan Museum of 
Art in New York, and he gave to the American Ballet Theater, 
hoping it would mount a ballet with a Holocaust theme. At 
the Jewish Theological Seminary, Boesky often spoke to the 
chief librarian about rare Jewish books, which he eagerly col- 
lected. He eventually lent the library several of his finest man- 
uscripts, and gave the seminary $2 million to help construct a 
new library building. It was named for him and his wife, but 
as his troubles mounted he asked or was asked to withdraw 
his name. Shortly before his sentencing, Boesky enrolled in 
classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Hebrew and an 
introduction to Mishnah, Midrash, and Talmud. 

[Stewart Kampel (2 nd ed.)] 

BOETHUSIANS, a religious and political sect which existed 
during the century preceding the destruction of the Second 
Temple. According to rabbinic tradition the Boethusians and 
the Sadducees were named after two disciples of *Antigonus 
of Sokho, Zadok and Boethus. They misinterpreted the maxim 
of their teacher, "Be not like servants who serve their master 
in order to receive a reward" as meaning that there was no 
reward for good works, and thus they denied the doctrine of 
resurrection and the world to come. They thereupon estab- 
lished the two sects named after them (arn 1 13b). 

Modern scholars however consider this account to be 
legendary and they ascribe the origin of the Boethusians to 
the high priest Simeon b. Boethus who was appointed high 
priest by Herod the Great in 24 b.c.e. (Jos., Ant., 15:320), in 
succession to Joshua b. Phabi, in order to afford him a suitable 
status, as he desired to marry Herod's daughter, Mariamne 11. 
Although in their theological views they closely resembled the 
Sadducees, some scholars regard them merely as a branch of 
them (see *Sadducees), and are always mentioned together 
with them, they did not share their aristocratic background, 
and whereas the Sadducees supported the Hasmonean dy- 
nasty, the Boethusians were loyal to the Herodians. It is they 
who are apparently referred to in the New Testament as Hero- 
dians (Mark 3:16; 12:13). The Boethusians were regarded by 
the Talmud as cynical and materialistic priests. They hired 
false witnesses to delude the Pharisees about the new moon 
(rh 22b; tj, rh 57d; Tosef., rh 1:15). They maintained that 
the Omer (Men. 10:3) was to be offered on the first Sunday 
after Passover, and not on the morrow of the first day and, as 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



33 



BOGALE, YONA 



a result, differed as to the date of Shavuot which according to 
them must always fall on a Sunday (Hog. 24). They held spe- 
cial views on the preparation of incense on the Day of Atone- 
ment (tj, Yoma 1:39a; Tosef, Yoma 1:8). In terms of the Sab- 
bath ritual, they were not even considered as Jews (Eruv. 68b). 
The high priestly "House of Boethus" is criticized in the Tal- 
mud for its oppression, "Woe is me because of the House of 
Boethus, woe is me because of their staves" (with which they 
beat the people - Pes. 57a; cf. Tosef, Men. 13:21). 

Other Boethusian high priests included Joezer and 
Eleazar b. Boethus (Jos., Ant., 17:164, 339), Simeon Canth- 
eras (ibid., 19:297), Elionaeus b. Cantheras (ibid., 19:342), and 
* Joshua b. Gamala. 

bibliography: L. Finkelstein, Pharisees, 2 (1950 3 ), 762-79; 
Klausner, Bayit Sheni, 4 (1950 2 ), 43; Schuerer, Gesch, 2 (1907 4 ), 478 
n. 16. 

BOGALE, YONA (1908-1987), Ethiopian Jewish (*Beta 
Israel) personality. Bogale was born in 1908 (some sources 
say 1910 or 1911) in the village of Wolleqa northeast of the im- 
portant Ethiopian city of Gondar. His father was a weaver, who 
also worked as a tenant farmer for a local Christian nobleman. 
In 1921 Jacques *Faitlovitch visited Ethiopia for the fourth time 
and spent several months in Walleqa. At the end of his stay he 
took Yona Bogale with him to study in Europe. Bogale studied 
two years at the Mizrachi Tahkemoni School in Jerusalem be- 
fore continuing his education in Frankfurt, Switzerland, and 
France. By the time he returned to Ethiopia he had learned to 
speak over half a dozen languages. Until the Italian conquest of 
Ethiopia in 1935/6 Bogale worked as a teacher in the "Falasha" 
school which had been established by Faitlovitch and Taamrat 
Emmanuel in Addis Ababa in 1923. Following the end of the 
Fascist occupation in 1941 Yona worked for the Ethiopian Min- 
istry of Education. He resigned in 1953 to devote himself to the 
Beta Israel community, and played a crucial role in the estab- 
lishment and operation of the Jewish Agency's schools in Ethi- 
opia. Following the closure of these schools Yona continued 
to work among his people and served as the major mediator 
for contact between Ethiopian and world Jewry. Perhaps the 
clearest reflection of his attempts to create a bridge between 
the two communities were his writings, A "Falasha" Book of 
Jewish Festivals, an Amharic translation of portions of Pirke 
Avot, and a Hebrew- Amharic dictionary. Although generally 
treated by outsiders as the "leader" of the Beta Israel, within 
the community his position was ambiguous and he often came 
into conflict with other important community members. In 
1979, Yona immigrated to Israel where he continued his ac- 
tivities on behalf of the Beta Israel. 

[Steven Kaplan (2 nd ed.)] 

BOGDAN, CORNELIU (1921-1990), Romanian diplomat. 
During World War 11, he was unable to continue his studies in 
Romania because he was a Jew and eventually went to study at 
the Sorbonne in Paris where he joined the Communist Party. 
Returning to Romania after the end of World War 11, he be- 



came a Romanian diplomat and, under the Ceausescu regime, 
served as Romanian ambassador to the U.S. (1967-70), Canada 
(1968-70), and Costa Rica (1970-71), subsequently heading 
the West European desk in the Romanian Foreign Ministry. 
He and the foreign minister, Corneliu Manescu, also a long- 
time Communist, shared the same sophisticated intellectual 
background, with less nationalistic tendencies, and both came 
to differ with Ceausescu, and - as a result - in due course they 
lost their official jobs. For most of the 1980s, Bogdan earned 
his living as a translator and was under virtual house arrest. 
In 1988, he was allowed to move to the U.S. where he had 
been awarded a fellowship. He remained there until the new 
regime established after the execution of Ceausescu recalled 
him and appointed him foreign minister, hoping that his ex- 
pertise would help in forging new ties with the West. How- 
ever, he died a few days after his appointment. 

BOGDANOR, VERNON (1943- ), British professor of gov- 
ernment. One of the best-known and most visible commenta- 
tors on constitutional and political affairs in the British press 
and media, Bogdanor was professor of politics and govern- 
ment at Oxford University and vice principal of Brasenose 
College, Oxford. He is the author of The Monarchy and the 
Constitution (1995) and of The British Constitution in the Twen- 
tieth Century (2004). He is especially well known for his expert 
opinion on the role of the British monarchy in the contem- 
porary British constitution. He has also wrote Devolution in 
the United Kingdom (1999), The People and the Party System 
(1981), and many other works. 

[William D. Rubinstein (2 nd ed.)] 

BOGDANOVICH, PETER (1939- ), U.S. film director. Bog- 
danovich was born in Kingston, n.y., to Jewish immigrants 
who had fled the Nazis. His father, Borislav Bogdanovich, 
was a Serbian artist and his mother, Herma (nee Robinson), 
came from a wealthy Austrian family. Herma was pregnant 
with Peter in Europe, but gave birth to him in America. He 
attended the Collegiate School and the Stella Adler Theatre 
Studio, and began his career as a summer stock and television 
actor in the 1950s. In the 1960s, he worked as editor of Show- 
bill and film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art in 
New York City and wrote film articles for Esquire magazine. 
Bogdanovich turned to directing with the Roger Corman- 
produced Targets (1968). Bogdanovichs The Last Picture Show 
(1971) received eight Academy Award nominations, including 
best director, and won two for supporting actor and actress. 
Bogdanovich fell in love with the films star, 19 -year-old Cy- 
bill Shepherd, and divorced his wife and collaborator, Polly 
Piatt, whom he had married in 1962 and with whom he had 
two children. Bogdanovichs next film was the comedy What's 
Up, Doc? (1972), starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal. 
He was hailed for Paper Moon (1973), a Depression era Oscar- 
winning comedy. Films starring Shepherd, Daisy Miller (1974), 
based on the Henry James novella, and the Cole Porter musi- 
cal At Long Last Love (1975), failed as did Nickelodeon (1976). 



34 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOGER, HAYYIM 



Shepherd and Bogdanovich ended their relationship in 1978. 
Bogdanovich returned with Saint Jack (1979) based on Paul 
Therouxs novel. During the filming of They All Laughed, Bog- 
danovich fell in love with 1980 Playboy Playmate and co-star 
Dorothy Stratten whose attempt to leave her husband, Paul 
Snider, ended in a murder-suicide (and was the basis for the 
movie Star 80). Bogdanovich bought the rights to They All 
Laughed after distributors passed on it due to the Stratten mur- 
der, but the limited release left Bogdanovich bankrupt. Bog- 
danovich wrote a paean to Stratten, The Killing of the Unicorn: 
Dorothy Stratten, 1960-1980 (1984). Over the next few years, 
he directed the Cher drama Mask (1985); Illegally Yours (1988); 
Texasville (1990), the sequel to The Last Picture Show; Noises 
Off (1992); and The Thing Called Love (1993). In 1992, draw- 
ing on taped interviews and his in-depth knowledge of the di- 
rector, he published This Is Orson Welles. He followed with a 
book of interviews with directors: Who the Devil Made It: On 
Directing Pictures (1997) and Peter Bogdanovichs Movie of the 
Week: 52 Classic Forms for One Full Year (1999). In 2000, Bog- 
danovich returned to acting in the hbo Mafia drama hit The 
Sopranos, playing Dr. Elliot Kupferberg. In 2001, Bogdanov- 
ich divorced Louise Hoogstraten, Dorothy Strattens younger 
sister, whom he had married in 1986. While Bogdanovich had 
not directed a big-screen film since The Cats Meow (2001), 
he continued to direct made -for- television features, including 
the documentary The Mystery of Natalie Wood (2004) and the 

Pete Rose biopic Hustle (2004). 

[Adam Wills (2 nd ed.)] 



cipal of the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School in Wood- 
bine, New Jersey (1900). He believed he had discovered his 
mission: "the feet of Jewish youth were to be turned toward a 
new destiny, leaving behind the peddler s packs and the sweat- 
shops and the slums of their fathers," he wrote in his autobi- 
ography. However, the students at the school did not aspire 
to the status of a rural peasantry; they turned instead to the 
administrative and scientific aspects of agriculture, and Bo- 
gen vehemently dissented from the directors' efforts to reduce 
the length of study from three years to one and eliminate the 
scientific component, in order to produce a "contented Jewry 
working in the fields." Resigning in 1904, he became superin- 
tendent of the United Jewish Charities, Cincinnati, and also 
directed the work of the Jewish Settlement in Cincinnati. In 
1913 he became field secretary of the Conference of Jewish 
Charities. Bogen maintained that the distinctive function of 
Jewish welfare was to intensify Jewish group consciousness 
and identity. Following the outbreak of World War 1, he turned 
to problems of international relief, working in Holland, Po- 
land, and Russia for the ^American Jewish Joint Distribution 
Committee from 1917 to 1924. His autobiography, Born a Jew 
(1930), deals mostly with his relief efforts in Eastern Europe. 
Bogens philosophy of sectarian social work is summarized in 
his Jewish Philanthropy (1917). 

bibliography: M.Z. Hexter, in: Jewish Social Service Quar- 
terly, 6 (1929), 39-40; A. Segal, in: B'nai B'rith Magazine, 43 (1929), 

315-6. 

[Roy Lubove] 



BOGEN, ALEXANDER (1916- ), Israel artist. Bogen 
was born in Poland and during his youth studied painting 
and sculpture at the Faculty of Art in the University of Vilna. 
Bogen fled to Russia as the Nazis advanced in 1941. Captured 
near Minsk, he was taken back to the Vilna ghetto, escaped, 
but returned to organize resistance. He was a commander 
of a partisan group in a forest in Belarus and helped some 
300 young Jews escape and join the partisans. During the 
war he made drawings of the partisans, now displayed at 
the Ghetto Fighters* House Museum and Yad Vashem Mu- 
seum. After the war, he returned to Vilna, and was appointed 
art professor in Lodz and Warsaw. In 1951, he immigrated to 
Israel and established an art school in Tel Aviv. He recovered 
some of the drawings he had made in the ghetto and the for- 
ests. His late works were in many ways reminiscent of his 
war paintings. 

[Shaked Gilboa (2 nd ed.)] 

BOGEN, BORIS DAVID (1869-1929), U.S. social worker. 
Bogen, born in Moscow, emigrated to the United States in the 
early 1890s. He studied at the New York University School of 
Pedagogy in 1897. While working toward his degree, Bogen 
taught English in the Baron de Hirsch Trade School, and in 
1896 accepted a teaching appointment at the Hebrew Technical 
Institute, the Educational Alliance. Objecting to the schools 
"pure Americanism" emphasis, Bogen left and became prin- 



BOGER (Bograshov), HAYYIM (1876-1963), educator and 
yishuv leader in Erez Israel. Boger was born in Chernigovka, 
Crimea. He first received a religious education, and later ac- 
quired enough secular education to enable him to receive a de- 
gree and teaching diploma from the University of Berne, Swit- 
zerland. Boger, an active opponent of the ^Uganda Scheme, 
was a leader of the Ziyyonei Zion movement in Russia, and 
helped organize its conference in Freiburg (1905). In 1906 
he settled in Erez Israel, where he was a founder of the He- 
brew Gymnasium Society in Tel Aviv. Deported in 1915 by the 
Turkish authorities, Boger founded a Hebrew school in Alex- 
andria, Egypt. He returned to Palestine in 1919 and became 
joint headmaster of the Herzlia Gymnasium, with Benzion 
*Mossinson. A leading figure in the affairs of Tel Aviv and 
the yishuv, he represented the General Zionists and served 
as a member of the Tel Aviv municipality, as delegate to the 
Asefat ha-Nivharim ("Elected Assembly"), and later as mem- 
ber of the Second Knesset, whose opening session in 1952 he 
chaired as its oldest member. He wrote Ba-Arazot Rehokot 
("In Distant Lands," 1930), and Tiyyul bi-Yhudah ("Journey 
in Judea," 1930). In 1921 he helped found the Nordiah district 
in Tel Aviv for Jews from Jaffa made homeless by the Arab ri- 
ots of that year. The districts main street is named Bograshov 
Street in his honor. 

bibliography: D. Smilansky, Im Benei Dori (1942), 151-7. 

[Abraham Aharoni] 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



35 



BOGHEN, FELICE 



BOGHEN, FELICE (1869-1945), writer, composer, and pia- 
nist. Boghen taught theory at the Istituto Reale Luigi Cheru- 
bini in Florence in 1910 and was the pianist of the Trio Flo- 
rentine He wrote an opera Alcestis, and piano works, and 
edited old Italian music. His written works include Appunti 
ed esempiper Vuso deipedali del Pianoforte (1915), and L'Arte 
di Pasquini (1931). 

BOGORAD, LAWRENCE (1921-2004), U.S. biologist. Bogo- 
rad was born in Tashkent, Russia, but was taken to the United 
States as an infant. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 
1935. Bogorad studied at the University of Chicago, where he 
received a B.S. in botany (1942) and a Ph.D. in plant physiol- 
ogy (1949). From 1951 to 1953 he was a fellow at the Rockefeller 
Institute working in the laboratory of Prof. Sam Granick. In 
1953 he returned to the University of Chicago, joining the fac- 
ulty of the Department of Botany and became a professor of 
botany in 1961. Bogorad became professor of biology at Har- 
vard University in 1967, and was chairman of the Department 
of Biological Sciences (1974-76), and director of the Maria 
Moors Cabot Foundation in 1976. He was named the Maria 
Moors Cabot Professor of Biology in 1980. He retired from 
Harvard in 1991 as professor emeritus in molecular and cellu- 
lar biology and continued his research in Harvard's Biological 
Laboratories. Colleagues and former students held the Law- 
rence Bogorad Symposium in his honor every few years, the 
last in 2001 at Cambridge. Bogorad's research concentrated 
on chlorophyll synthesis, particularly the investigation of the 
effects of light in the induction of the complex greening pro- 
cess through which pale, etiolated leaves of plants grown in the 
dark become green and active in photosynthesis. Early work 
on the enzymes involved in chlorophyll synthesis with algae 
furthered our understanding of the biosynthesis of hemes and 
bile pigment. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Bogorads research 
dealt with the biogenesis of chloroplasts, the nature of the or- 
ganelle of dna, and its function in the synthesis of chloroplast 
proteins as well as other phytomolecular biological processes. 
He is best known for his work on the biosynthesis of porphy- 
rins and for sequencing and identification of the first chloro- 
plast genes. Bogorad was a fellow of the American Academy 
of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of 
Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Danish Acad- 
emy of Sciences and Letters. He was president of the Soci- 
ety for Developmental Biology (1983) and of the American 
Society of Plant Physiologists (1968-69). Bogorad was on a 
number of editorial boards and served on national commit- 
tees as well as on the Council and Executive Committee of 
the American Society of Cell Biology. In 1987 he was elected 
president of the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science, which has close to 300 national and regional sci- 
entific societies and academies as formal affiliates and 130,000 
individual members. 

bibliography: H. Swift, in: Science 229 (1985), 353-54 

[Ruth Rossing (2 nd ed.)] 



BOGORAZ, VLADIMIR GERMANOVICH (Mendelvich, 
Nathan; pseud. N.A. Tan, V.G. Tan; 1865-1936), Russian eth- 
nographer, revolutionary, and man of letters. Born in Ovruch, 
Volhynia, he was expelled from St. Petersburg University for 
revolutionary activities. He continued his political work under 
his assumed name of Vladimir Bogoraz, and at the age of 20 
converted to Christianity. In 1886 he was arrested in Moscow, 
imprisoned for two years, and then exiled to Siberia. There he 
met Vladimir * Jochelson, who became his lifelong friend and 
collaborator. It was during his years of imprisonment and ex- 
ile that Bogoraz began the studies that were to make him an 
ethnographic authority on the Chukchee and Yakutsk natives 
of Siberia and on the Paleo- Asiatic peoples generally. 

Released in 1889, Bogoraz joined the Jesup North Pacific 
exploration organized by the American Museum of Natural 
History in New York City and directed by Franz *Boas, who 
was to exert a significant influence on his life and achieve- 
ments. On this expedition, Bogoraz was responsible for in- 
vestigations of the Chukchee and the Siberian Eskimo. Jochel- 
son was also a member of the expedition, as well as a third 
Jewish revolutionary, Lev Sternberg. All three men produced 
reports of precise and reliable scholarship. Bogoraz' included 
The Chukchee (vol. 7 of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition 
Publications) and Chukchee Mythology (vol. 8 pt. 1, of the 
same series). 

Bogoraz went back to Siberia to continue his ethnologi- 
cal studies, and made several visits to the United States. He 
returned to Russia and again involved himself with subversive 
organizations. For his part in the 1905 revolution he served 
another term of imprisonment. After the revolution of 1917 
he was appointed professor at Leningrad University and cu- 
rator of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. He 
also founded and directed various official institutions, such as 
the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism - actu- 
ally a museum of comparative religions - in the former Kazan 
Cathedral in Leningrad. As director of the Northern Peoples 
Institute in Leningrad he was able to do much to assist the 
cultural and political development of the peoples of Siberia. 
Despite their service to the revolutionary regime, Bogoraz and 
Sternberg were attacked for their views, which were regarded 
as going beyond the narrow Marxism of their period. 

In addition to his academic publications, Bogoraz also 
produced some creative writing under the nom de plume N.A. 
Tan, some of it on Jewish themes. He published a pioneering 
Chukchee-Russian dictionary which appeared in 1937. His 
literary works include revolutionary poems (1900); Chukots- 
kiya razskazy ("Chukchee Tales," 1899); and the novel Vosem 
plemyen ("Eight Tribes," 1902). 

bibliography: Krader, in: iess, 2 (1968), 116-9, incl. bibl. 

[Ephraim FischofF] 

BOGROV (Beharav), DMITRI (1888-1911), Russian ter- 
rorist and revolutionary, who was executed for shooting the 
czarist prime minister Stolypin. Bogrov was the grandson of 



36 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOHEMIA 



a well-known rabbi and the son of a lawyer. While a law stu- 
dent, he joined an anarchist group but later entered the service 
of the Russian secret police (Ochrana), claiming that he did 
so in the interest of the revolutionary movement. Before he 
killed Stolypin, Bogrov asked the Social Revolutionary Party 
to give its approval to his action, but they refused to do so. His 
true motive was never discovered, but some people believed 
he sought to dispel the suspicions aroused by his connection 
with the secret police. 

bibliography: E. Lazarev, in Volya Rossii y nos. 6-7, 8-9 



(1926). 



[Simha Katz] 



BOGROV (Beharav), GRIGORI ISAAKOVICH (1825- 
1885), author and journalist. The son of a Poltava rabbi, Bo- 
grov was an extreme assimilationist: his Orthodox upbringing 
and the life of Russian Jewry in the 1830S-1840S were reflected 
negatively in Zap iski yevreya (1871-73; Memoiren eines Juden, 
1880). He was the effective editor of Russkiy yevrey, later work- 
ing on Razsvet and Voskhod, and wrote several works of so- 
cio-historical interest on Russo-Jewish life, such as the novel 
Yevreyskiy manuskript (1876; Heb. tr., Ketav-Yad Ivri, 1900), 
on the *Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-49. Bogrov converted 
to Christianity shortly before his death. 

BOGUSLAV, city in Kiev district, Ukraine, that passed to 
Russia from Poland in 1793. Jews resided in Boguslav from 
the beginning of the 17 th century and an imposing synagogue 
was built there soon after the community was founded. In 1620 
they were restricted in leasing property because the burghers 
complained that Jews had taken over most of the houses and 
stores in the marketplace and were competing with the local 
traders. The Jews in Boguslav suffered during the *Haidamak 
revolts in the area. During the uprising of 1768 they fled from 
the city; their homes were destroyed and their property looted. 
Although 574 Jewish poll-tax payers in Boguslav are recorded 
in 1765, only 251 remained after 1768. The community devel- 
oped after Boguslav became part of Russia in 1793. A Hebrew 
printing press was established there in 1820-21, and Jewish- 
owned enterprises included textile and tanning factories. Jews 
also engaged in handicrafts and dealt in grain and fruit. The 
Jewish population numbered 5,294 in 1847 and 7,445 in 1897 
(65% of the total). 

After World War 1, the Jews in Boguslav suffered severely 
in the civil war. On May 13, 1919, they were attacked by gangs 
of marauding peasants that killed 20 Jews, and on August 27 
*Denikins "white" army, which occupied the city, pillaged all 
the houses there, and massacred about 40 Jews. Subsequently, 
a Jewish self-defense force was formed in Boguslav (under the 
auspices of the Soviet government) which comprised the en- 
tire male population of about 1,000 citizens. It fought off the 
gangs and also took part in punitive actions in neighboring 
villages. Boguslav then became an asylum for thousands of 
Jewish refugees from the towns and villages of the surround- 
ing areas. The self-defense force was disbanded in 1923. The 



Jewish population numbered 6,432 in 1926 (53% of the total) 
and dropped to 2,230 in 1939. In the 1930s the Jews were a ma- 
jority in the local trade unions, and many were employed as 
factory workers and clerks in local industry. The Germans oc- 
cupied Boguslav on July 26, 1941, murdering most of the Jews 
by the end of the year. Artisans required for work remained 
alive until they too were executed in July 1943. 

bibliography: A. Yaari, in: ks, 20 (1943/44), 45-48; M. Ko- 
rot, in: Reshumot, 3 (1923), 140-57; A. Rosenthal, Ha-Haganah ha-Ivrit 
ba-Ir Boguslav (1929). add. bibliography: pk Ukarainah, s.v. 

[Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

BOHEMIA (Cz. Cecny, Cesko, Tschechien; Ger. Boehmen; 
Heb. DHl ,]373D ,DrPD ,Dn572D), independent kingdom in Central 
Europe, until the beginning of the 14 th century, affiliated later 
in the Middle Ages with the Holy Roman Empire. In 1526 it 
became part of the hereditary *Hapsburg dominions and in 
1620 lost its independence completely. From 1918 it was part 
of modern ^Czechoslovakia (in 1939-45 part of the Nazi pro- 
tectorate of Bohemia-Moravia), subsequently the Czech Re- 
public. 

Early and Medieval Periods 

The beginnings of Jewish settlement in Bohemia are much 
disputed, and evidence has to rely on traditions that Jews had 
settled there before recorded Bohemian history. Trade con- 
tacts between the Roman Empire and southern Bohemia cer- 
tainly brought Jews to the region, and some could have settled 
there. Presumably, the Jewish traders mentioned in the Raffel- 
staetten Tax Ordinance (906) were also active in Bohemia. In 
the second half of the 10th century Jews engaged in the slave 
trade in Bohemia are mentioned by *Ibrahim ibn Yakub. The 
Bohemian dukes of the 11 th century probably employed Jewish 
moneyers. The first Bohemian chronicler, Cosmas of Prague, 
mentions Jews there in 1090. In 1096 many Jews in Bohemia 
were massacred by the Crusaders and others were forcibly 
converted. Those who reverted to Judaism and attempted 
to leave were robbed on their departure (1098). According 
to Cosmas Vicedominus *Jacobus Apella, a high court offi- 
cial reverted to Judaism in 1124. Apparently, the communi- 
ties of *Cheb (Eger) and *Litomefice (Leitmeritz) were well 
organized by the end of the 12 th century. The places of Jew- 
ish settlement and activity in Bohemia are documented from 
the 13 th century onward. The customs dues payable by Jews 
were regulated in 1222. The plethora of scholars living in Bo- 
hemia in this century, including *Isaac b. Jacob ha-Lavan of 
Prague, *Isaac b. Mordecai (Ribam), Eliezer b. Jacob, 'Abra- 
ham b. Azriel of Bohemia, and *Isaac b. Moses of Vienna (Or 
Zarua), attests that Jewish culture was already deeply rooted 
and widespread among the communities there. From here 
*Pethahiah of Regensburg set out on his travels. The use of 
Slavic -Bohemian terms in the writings of some of these schol- 
ars to explain Hebrew terms indicates the linguistic and cul- 
tural ties existing between the Jews and local society. In 1241 
the Jewish communities of Bohemia suffered with the rest of 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



37 



BOHEMIA 




Varnsdorf 




A#Decin 
Sobedruhy 



▲ • Ceska Lipa 



Bilina # Litomerice A Ustek 

Most • • 

Lovosice • Terezin Radoun 



Liberec 
• Jablonec 



Mnichovo A Turnov 
Hradiste 



Bosyne 



Chomutov* # • 

a Udhce Cickovice Roudnice 

Kadan. Postoloprty Libochovice^ ■ A ♦ 

Nejdek. u „ /atec. •* . -Louny Budyne Nimetice* 

iNejaeK A Hroznetin Ceradice ■ HnvciceA SpomysU ABystrice 

Lomnicka Podboransky Rohozec 9 • • Libesice _ ■ __ a 

xr , T f Letov ■ Mecholupy ^ Ionit - e . Kostelec 

►Karlovy Vary ™ SlanyB- a. Posl A cin • 



a Jicin 



Mlada Boleslav 

Veselice 

Horice 
•Krinec A« Nov y B y dzov 



Nove Straseci 
Drahonice 

RakovnikA 



Blevice *• • J 

• Kladno A.Dablice Brandys 



Lysa 



louc 



• MestecKralove R vr hnov Rokytnice 

■Kovanice „-,, ~ JV Kychnov A / 

A ry. , • Lhlumec n. Lidlinov A 

__ T r A Zizkov 

Hostoun • A Josetov ♦Prague • Kluk 

n JinoniceA* *Strasnice APristoupim 

Rousinov Radice* AUhrineves r •Kolin 

Beroun# m . •Strancice 

Uhlirske Janovice Casiav 

u. Krizku Malesov 



^Trebotov 
Teresov MotinaA Kostelec A 

Koren AVseruby ARadice ^ ? , A Lilen 

Dloulw *Tachov •Bolevec Praskolesy 

tt:_j a AKebi p n ovanv HOsek Beslin" ADobns BenesovA M . A .,.. 

a ruvjvauy Habry a rwvilrnv • Vilanov 

• d rt u«. M Cehna ■ ANeveklov Trhovy Stepanov ' JJreviKov 



♦ Te A lce Stenovice 



Plzen Rokycany p^ 



ram 



DolniLukaviceA Spalen^Porici Kamenec K osova Hora 



Kamyk Sedlcan Y Vlacim • a a Dolni Kratovice *Chotebor Podmekly 



Votice 



Naceradec 



Provonin 



Prestice 



ovice 



— — Bohostice . a a 

BrezniceA Zaluzany Neustupov a 

MiroviceAy^ ■ v T 4 F.lhancice ALukavec 

Kovarov" Nosetin ruaiKUf 



' V1CC *• Kaseiovice ^ UVdluv " nosetin APrudice *. d no " 

* D — '« S k|X L&. M, r „,,e. M "^- I-bn.ce ^ /*" . 

LoucimH Janovice „ A , ZbesickyA Cernovice N C erekev 

rL ' ^. .. Horazdovice » . n . , ■ btadlec n , 

Strezov A # Chhstov A | nOsek Pisek „ a Radenin 

NvrskoA aKcW A strelske Hostic* Rolodeje Y -^ Kame fi' Ce A Hor - Cerekev 




VamberkA 

# A •Molice Zamberk 

Pardubice 

a •Chrudim 
Hermanuv Mestec AZajezdec 



Luze # Litomysl 
Sternov t Golcuv Jenikov Mni^Qin 

• Zbraslavice" A B Mojesin 



Studeny 

Kosetice 



Svetla 

• Havlickuv Brod 



" AHumpolec 
A Horepnik 




Velhartice 



Rabi #AStrakonice 



Susice 



Dlouha Ves 



♦ before 1620 
A 1620" 1800 
■ 1800" 1850 

• from 1850 




Volyne Protivin- Neznasov 



Tucapy 

Prehotov Noy " Vcdnice 



Kardasova ■ 
Dub "Prazak Recice A Jindrichuv 

* . . Pistina Hradec 

Vlachovo Brezi Oicttbce AHluboka ■ Nova Bystrice 

• Trebon * Stare Mesto 

Ceske Budejovice* 




Cesky Krumlov 




Jewish communities in Bohemia. 



the population from the devastations of the Tatar invasion. In 
1254 *Pfemysl Otakar 11 granted a charter to the Jews based 
on the charter of the Austrian duke ^Frederick 11 (1244), ap- 
pending to it the bull issued by Pope ^Innocent 1 v combating 
the *blood libel. He reconfirmed it in 1268. The wave of new 
settlers who went to Bohemia after the havoc wreaked by the 
Tatars included a number of Jews. These settled in the cities 
mainly as moneylenders, encouraged by the grant of char- 
ters and the status conferred on them as *servi camerae regis, 
according them standing and protection at least not inferior 
to that in their countries of origin. The Altneu synagogue in 
^Prague was completed around 1270. At the time of the *Rind- 
fleisch massacres in 1298 King Wenceslaus 11 extorted large 
sums from Bohemian Jewry for protection. In 1336 King John 
of Luxemburg ordered the arrest of all the Jews in Bohemia 
to extort a ransom. There was a wave of massacres in this pe- 
riod in Caslavy and ^Jindrichuv Hradec (Neuhaus) in 1337, and 
also after a Host desecration libel in Koufim in 1338. The en- 
tire Cheb community was butchered in 1350. The atrocities of 
the 14 th century reached a peak with the massacre of the Jews 
in Prague in 1389. During this period Charles iv confirmed a 
number of privileges formerly issued to the Jews and in some 



cases afforded them protection, strictly enforcing their sta- 
tus as serfs of the chamber. Wenceslaus iv protected the Jews 
from oppression by the local nobility, but on several occasions 
canceled the debts owed to the Jews, as in 1411. The Jews suf- 
fered during the *Hussite uprising in 1419-37. The *Chomu- 
tov (Komotau) community was annihilated by the Hussites, 
while the Jews were expelled from Cheb and Jihlava (Iglau) on 
the charge of supporting them. In Jewish sources of the late 
15 th century evidence is found of strong sympathy for the reli- 
gious reformer John Huss and the Hussites, and in particular 
for the Taborites, who are regarded as Judaizers and fighting 
a just national war. 

16th and 17th Centuries 

With changes in the religious and social outlook of the bur- 
ghers, the growing interest in finance and the increasing 
availability of money, moneylending ceased to be a Jewish 
monopoly. The competition of Christian moneylenders, abet- 
ted by the hypocrisy that forbade Jews to do what they them- 
selves were engaged in, gradually eroded the central position 
held by Jews in this field. In addition, the weakening of cen- 
tral royal power threatened the existence of the Jews living in 



38 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOHEMIA 



the crown cities. Despite a decision of the Diet to tolerate the 
Jews (1501) and its confirmation by Ladislas 11 in 1510, they 
were eventually expelled from *Pilsen in 1504, and also from 
Prague, where some individuals were expressly permitted to 
remain. Their expulsion from the crown cities was formally 
proclaimed in 1541. Efforts made by ^Joseph (Joselmann) b. 
Gershom of Rosheim to intercede were unsuccessful. The pub- 
lication of the decree was followed by massacres of the Jews 
in Litomefice, Nymburk, *Roudnice nad Labem (Raudnitz), 
and *Zatec (Saaz). Later a number of Jews returned. The de- 
cree of expulsion was renewed in 1557, and the Jews vacated all 
the crown cities except Prague where a few families remained. 
Many Jews left for Poland and Turkey. 

By the end of the 16 th century half of Bohemian Jewry 
was living in Prague. The rest were scattered throughout the 
countryside in the villages and small towns under the pro- 
tection of the local nobility. Jews continued to reside in four 
towns, *Kolin, Roudnice, Bumsla (*Mlada Boleslav), and 
*Nachod (known in Jewish sources by their initials l"31p). 
Until the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683 the attitude of 
the authorities toward the Jews was influenced by the fear that 
they might support the Turks. In 1551 ^Ferdinand 1 enforced 
the ordinance compelling the Jews to wear the yellow *badge. 
Four hundred and thirteen Jewish taxpayers are recorded in 
Bohemia (except Prague) in 1570, and over 4,000 Jews at the 
beginning of the 17 th century. Until the development of a mer- 
cantilistic policy under ^Charles vi, the Jews were almost the 
only traders in the rural areas. Their function was regarded 
by the local lords as versilbern, i.e., the conversion of the sur- 
plus produce of their domains (mainly wool, hides, feathers, 
and cheese) into money, and the supply of luxuries for their 
sumptuous households. Despite their frequently small num- 
bers in many localities where they lived, the Jews of Bohemia 
developed an independent rural way of life and maintained 
Jewish traditions. Antagonism developed between the Prague 
community and the rest of Bohemian Jewry, the "Draussige" 
or "Huzim" ("outsiders"). The latter became organized in the 
*Landesjudenschaft. 

Conditions improved under *Rudolf 11 (1576-1612). Sub- 
sequently, the Prague community increased in size, attaining 
an importance in the Jewish world far beyond the bound- 
aries of the country. Bohemian Jews gained a reputation as 
goldsmiths. Hebrew printing flourished in Prague. Mordecai 
Meisel achieved influence as a court banker. Among the prom- 
inent scholars of the period were R. *Judah Loew b. Bezalel 
(Maharal) and the chronicler and astronomer David *Gans. 
Jacob *Bassevi of Trevenberg was the first Jew to be granted a 
coat of arms. There was marked reciprocal influence between 
Bohemian society, in particular the sectarians, and Jews in the 
social and cultural spheres. Jewish sources express a local Bo- 
hemian patriotism. Gans states in his chronicle Zemah David 
(Prague, 1595) that parts of his "General History" are written 
"to the glory ["IllD 1 ?] of this land in which I live." He gives a 
detailed description of Bohemia, its natural resources and its 
emblem, the lion, declaring "this land is full of Gods bless- 



ings." He indignantly repudiates an anti-Czech song popular 
with the German-speaking population: "Ye should know that 
this song is entirely lies." He refers to the antiquity and beauty 
of Prague (Zemah David, 2, fols. 7a, 46b, 49a, 97a). 

Jewish life in Bohemia was disrupted by the Thirty Years' 
War (1618-48). In 1629 ^Ferdinand 11 renewed and extended 
the privileges accorded to the Jews. However, in 1630 he or- 
dered them to attend the conversionist sermons of the ^Jesu- 
its. There were 14,000 Jewish taxpayers in Bohemia in 1635. 
The community absorbed many refugees from the *Chmiel- 
nicki massacres in Poland in 1648. In 1650 the Diet decided 
to curtail the number of Jews permitted to reside in Bohemia 
and limit their residence to the places where Jews had been 
living in 1618. This was the beginning of the "Jew-hatred of 
the authorities," in contrast to the attitude of the nobility who 
were interested in the income they derived from the Jews. Irk- 
some restrictions were introduced and there were increasing 
demands for higher taxes. For Prague, a special committee, 
the Judenreduktionskomission ("Commission to Reduce the 
Number of the Jewish Population") was appointed. The num- 
ber of the Jews outside Prague was estimated to be 30,000 in 
1724. They lived in 168 towns and small market towns and 
672 villages. 

Familiants Laws 

The curtailment culminated in the ^Familiants Laws under 
Charles vi (1726) which only allowed 8,541 families to reside 
in Bohemia. Jews were segregated in special quarters. Bohe- 
mia was divided into 12 district rabbinates (Kreisrabbinat). The 
Jews were expelled from Prague by *Maria Theresa in 1744, but 
the decree of expulsion was remitted in 1748 and most of the 
Jews returned. A decree for the whole of Bohemia (1745) was 
not carried out. There were 29,091 Jews living in Bohemia in 
1754, of whom one-third lived in Prague. (See table "Jewish 
Population of Bohemia") In the second half of the 18 th cen- 
tury some Jews in Bohemia were attracted to the *Frankists. 
Bohemian Jews took an active part in the industrialization of 
the country and the development of its trade, among them 
the *Hoenigsberg family, Simon and Leopold von *Laemel, 
and the *Popper family. 

Toleranzpatent 

The Toleranzpatent of * Joseph 11 for Bohemian Jewry was 
issued on February 13, 1782. As an outcome, Jewish judicial 
autonomy was suspended, Jewish schools with teaching in 
German were opened, and the use of German was made com- 
pulsory for business records. Jews were permitted to attend 
general high schools and universities, and were subject to 
compulsory military service. These measures were supported 
by adherents of the *Haskalah movement in Prague, including 
members of the *Jeiteles family, the *Gesellschaft der jungen 
Hebraeer, Peter *Beer, Naphtali Herz *Homberg, and Raphael 
*Joel, among others. They were resisted by the majority of the 
Jews, led by the rabbis Ezekiel *Landau, Eleazar *Fleckeles, 
Samuel *Kauder, and Bezalel Ronsburg. The legal position of 
the Jews of Bohemia was summarized in the Judensystemal- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



39 



BOHEMIA 



patent issued in 1797. Bohemian Jews were entitled to reside 
in places where they had been domiciled in 1725. They were 
permitted to pursue their regular occupations, with some ex- 
ceptions, being prohibited from obtaining new licenses for the 
open sale of alcoholic beverages or from leasing flour mills. 
New synagogues could only be built by special permission. 
Rabbis were obliged to have studied philosophy at a univer- 
sity within the empire. Only Jews who had completed a Ger- 
man elementary school could obtain a marriage license or be 
admitted to talmudic education. The ^censorship of Hebrew 
books was upheld. 

19 th and 20 th Centuries 

The increasing adaptation of individual Jews to the general 
culture, and their rising economic importance, furthered Jew- 
ish assimilation into the ruling German sector. During this 
period Jews such as Moses and Leopold Porges-Portheim, 
Aaron and Solomon Pribram, Moses, Solomon, and Leopold 
Jerusalem developed the Bohemian textile industry, introduc- 
ing modern machinery. The discrepancy between the rise in 
economic and cultural standards and the restrictions imposed 
on the Jews by their humiliating legal status led to frequent 
circumvention of the existing legislation. 

The budding Czech national renaissance at first attracted 
the Jewish intelligentsia, enraptured with the new learning, 
among them Siegfried *Kapper, Ludwig August *Frankl, and 
David *Kuh, supported by Vaclav Bolemir Nebesky. However, 
the inimical attitude of Czech leaders such as Karel Havlicek- 
Borovsky, and the outlook of the majority of the Jews molded 
by an essentially German education, soon brought them into 
the German liberal camp, in which Moritz *Hartmann and 
Ignaz *Kuranda distinguished themselves in the revolution- 
ary tumult of 1848. 

In general, however, especially in the small communities, 
Jewish society continued the traditional way of life and mo- 
res despite the persistent trend toward assimilation and the 
changes introduced by such communities as *Teplice. Legis- 
lation introduced in the 1840s brought some relief of the hu- 
miliating restrictions. In 1841 the prohibition on Jews owning 
land was waived. The *oath more iudaico and the Jewish tax 
(collected by a much hated consortium of Jewish notables, 
the "Juedische Steuerdirection") were annulled in 1846. The 
Jewish orphanage in Prague was built from its surplus funds. 
The 1848 revolution proved disappointing to the Jews as it was 
accompanied by anti-Jewish riots in many localities, princi- 
pally in Prague. The Jews of Bohemia, however, benefited by 
the abolition in ^Austria of marriage restrictions and by the 
granting of freedom of residence. There began a "Landflucht," 
movement from the small rural communities to the commer- 
cial centers in the big towns, in which many of the former 
communities disintegrated in the process. This was speeded 
up later by the growing antisemitism among Czechs and Ger- 
mans alike (see below). There were 347 communities in Bo- 
hemia in 1850, nine with more than 100 families and 22 with 
over 50. By 1880 almost half of Bohemian Jewry was living in 



towns with over 5,000 inhabitants, mostly in the German- 
speaking area. There were 197 communities in 1890. In 1921 
only 14.55% of Bohemian Jewry lived in localities of less than 
2,000 inhabitants, and were 0.27% of the population in these 
localities. Sixty-nine percent lived in towns of over 10,000. 
In 1930, 46.4% of all Bohemian Jews lived in Prague and the 
number of Jews in the countryside had decreased by 40% since 
1921. During this period many Jews moved to Vienna or im- 
migrated to the United States. Until 1848 the vast majority of 
Bohemian Jewry had belonged to the poorest sectors of the 
population. Subsequently, most of them, as a result of their 
economic activities, moved up to the prosperous and wealthy 
strata even though their occupations remained essentially in 
the same sphere as before 1848. 

In the second half of the 19 th century Bohemian Jewry 
became increasingly involved in the bitter conflict between the 
Czech and German national groups. While the elder genera- 
tion generally preferrred assimilation with German culture, 
and supported the German-oriented liberal political parties, 
the Czecho-Jewish movement (Svaz *Cechozidu), initiated 
and supported by Filip *Bondy, Siegfried Kapper, Bohumil 
*Bondy, and others, achieved some success in promoting 
Czech assimilation. By 1900, 55% of Bohemian Jewry declared 
their mother tongue as Czech and 45% as German. Some Jew- 
ish leaders, notably Joseph Samuel *Bloch, advised Bohemian 
Jews not to become involved in the conflict of the nationalities, 
but they continued to take sides on this issue until Zionism 
enabled at least its adherents to remain neutral. 

The Jewish Population of Bohemia, 1754-1930 



Year 


Numbers 


1754 


29,094 


1764 


31 ,937 


1774 


31,929 


1780 


39,693 


1790 


45,906 


1800 


47,865 


1810 


50,629 


1820 


59,607 


1830 


67,338 


1840 


64,780 


1850 


75,459 


1869 


89,933 


1890 


94,529 


1900 


92,797 


1910 


85,927 


1921 


97,777 


1930 


76,301 



As a result of emigration and a steady decline in the birth 
and marriage rates among Jews in Bohemia, the percentage of 
the aged rose, and the total population of the community de- 
creased. The vast majority of Jews became indifferent to reli- 
gion and inclined toward total assimilation: the *Yahrzeit, the 
Day of Atonement, and a subscription to the Prager Tagblatt> 



40 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOHM, DAVID 



the German-liberal daily, were considered by many Jews their 
only links with Judaism. There was an increase in mixed mar- 
riages from 0.15% in 1881 to 1.75% in 1910, and 27.56% in 1930, 
and many dropped their Jewish affiliation. The percentage of 
Jewish mixed marriages was 0.15% in 1881, 1.75% in 1910, and 
27.65% in 1930. 

Of all persons in Bohemia considered Jewish according 
to the Nazi standards introduced in 1939, 11.1% were not of the 
Jewish faith. Antisemitism became strong in Bohemia at the 
end of the 19 th century. The German population of the Sude- 
tenland, the "Rand-Orls," was the stronghold of the *Schoe- 
nerer brand of racial antisemitism in the Hapsburg Empire 
(see also *antisemitic political parties and organizations). 
Czechs saw the Jews as the instruments and partisans of Ger- 
manization and the allies of Hapsburg patriotism. The eco- 
nomic anti-Jewish ^boycott movement in Bohemia, "Svuj k 
svemu" ("Each to his own kind"), was among the first of its 
sort to emerge in Europe and in particular hit Jewish shop- 
keepers in the villages. Finally a wave of blood libels, instigated 
by the Austrian ^Christian Social Party, swept Bohemia. These 
occurred in Kolin and Nachod, among other places, and cul- 
minated in the *Hilsner Case. At this time the internal division 
in Jewry between the parties supporting Czech or German as- 
similation became increasingly pronounced. Jews joined the 
liberal and radical parties of both sides. At the end of the 19 th 
century the Czecho-Jewish movement achieved the closure of 
Jewish schools where teaching was in German. During World 
War 1 Bohemia absorbed thousands of refugees from Eastern 
Europe. Many settled there permanently and contributed to 
the revival of Jewish religious and cultural life in the commu- 
nities. The establishment of independent ^Czechoslovakia in 
1918 linked Bohemian Jewry with the Jews living in the other 
parts of the new state. Bohemia attracted many Jews from 
Carpathian Russia (see *Sub Carpathian Ruthenia) and East- 
ern Slovakia, and the Jews of Bohemia were active in orga- 
nizing relief for Jews in these impoverished areas. After 1918 
there were three federations of communities, one for those 
of Great Prague and *Ceske *Budejovice and *Pilsen, one of 
Czech-speaking communities, and one of German-speak- 
ing communities. From 1926 they were represented, together 
with the federations of communities in Moravia and Silesia, 
by the "Nejvyssi rada svazu nabozenskych obci zidovskych v 
Cechach, na Morave a ve Slezsku" (Supreme Council of the 
Federations of Jewish Religious Communities in Bohemia, 
Moravia, and Silesia). In 1930, 46.4% of Bohemian Jewry de- 
clared their nationality as Czech, 31% German, and 20.5% Jew- 
ish. (See table "Jewish Population of Bohemia.") In 1937 there 
were 150 communities. In 1938 with the Sudeten crisis 29% of 
Bohemian Jewry living in the Sudeten area became refugees. 

The Jewish State Museum in Prague now has synagogue 
equipment and archivalia from more than 100 Bohemian com- 
munities, most of them brought there in 1942 by Nazi orders 
when the communities were deported. 

For Holocaust and contemporary period, see ^Czecho- 
slovakia. 



bibliography: Jews of Czechoslovakia, 1 (1968), 1-71, 
269-438; G. Kisch, In Search of Freedom (1949), 333-65 (extensive 
bibliography); Bondy-Dworsky; H. Gold, Diejuden und Judengemein- 
den Boehmens... (1934); H.R. von Kopetz, Versuch einer systemati- 
schen Darstellung... (Prague, 1846); A. Stein, Geschichte der Juden 
in Boehmen (1904); J. Bergl, in: Sbornik archivu ministerstva vnitra, 
6 (1933), 7-64; jggjc, 1-9 (1929-38); Zeitschrift fuer die Geschichte 
der Juden in der Tschechoslowakei, 1-5 (1930-38); R. Dan, in: Zeit- 
schrift fuer die Geschichte der Juden, 5 (1968), 177-201 (index for the 
above periodicals); R. Jakobson and M. Halle in: For Max Weinreich 
(1964), 147-72; O. Scheiber, ibid., (1964), 55-58, 153-7; S.H. Lieben, 
in: Afike Jehuda Festschrift (1930), 30, 39-68; B. Bretholz, Geschichte 
der Juden in Maehren, 1 (1934), index; Baron, Community, 3 (1942), 
index; F. Weltsch (ed.), Frag vi-Yerushalayim (1954); H. Tykocinski, 
in: Germ Jud, 1 (1963), 27-46; 2 (1968), 91-93; M. Lamed, in: blbi, 
8 (1965), 302-14; R. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Ju- 
den in den boehmischen Laendern, 1 (1969), incl. bibl.; idem, in: Roth, 
Dark Ages, 309-12, 440-1; idem, in: Judaica Bohemiae, 4 (1968), 
64-72; idem, in: Zion, 9 (1945), 1-26; 12 (1948), 49-65, 160-89; idem, 
in: jjs, 5 (1954), 156-66; 6 (1955), 35-45; idem, in: Gesher, 15 no. 2-3 
(1969), 11-82; F. Weltsch, ibid., 207-12; M. Ben-Sasson, Ha-Yehu- 
dim Mul ha-Reformazyah (1969), 66-68, 102-8; idem, in: Tarbiz, 29 

(1959/60), 306-7. 

[Jan Herman / Meir LamedJ 

°BOHL (Bohlius), SAMUEL (1611-1639), Lutheran Hebra- 
ist. Born in Greifenberg (Gryfice), Pomerania, Bohl taught 
at the University of Rostock, where he wrote an exposition 
of rabbinic commentaries on Malachi (1637) and a Hebrew 
grammar (1638). Other publications include an exposition 
of chapters seven to twelve of Isaiah, a commentary on Prov- 
erbs, and a treatise on the masoretic accents as the key to the 
verse-allocation of the Decalogue. Some of Bohl s works were 
published by G. Menthen in Thesaurus theologico-philologicus 
(vol. 1, Amsterdam, 1701). 

bibliography: J. Cothmann, Programma... ad exequias... 
Samueli Bohlio, in: H. Witte, ed., Memoriae theologorum..., ser. 4 
(1674); Nouvelle biographie g Mn Mrale, 6 (1853), 392; Steinschneider, 
Cat Bod, 79, nos. 469, 471; 803, no. 4617. add. bibliography: 
Steinschneider, in: zhb, 2, no. 113 (1897), 54. 

[Raphael Loewe] 

BOHM, DAVID (1917-1994), U.S. physicist. Bohm was born 
in Wilkes -Barre, Pennsylvania, and received his B.Sc. from 
Pennsylvania State University (1939) and Ph.D. in physics 
(1943), supervised by J. Robert *Oppenheimer initially at the 
California Institute of Technology and then at the University 
of California at Berkeley. He was assistant professor at Prince- 
ton University (1947-51) but was forced to leave after being 
blacklisted in the McCarthy era Communist witch hunt. Cited 
for contempt of Congress for refusing to name names, he left 
the United States and served as professor of physics at the 
University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (1951-55), lecturer at the Haifa 
Technion (1955-57), an d research fellow at the University of 
Bristol, U.K. (1957-61). He became professor of theoretical 
physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, until re- 
tirement in 1987 but continued to work there until his death. 
Bohms first discovery in conventional physics was that elec- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



41 



BOHM, HENRIK 



trons stripped from atoms behave in an organized manner. 
His early ideas on theoretical physics were set out in his book 
Quantum Theory (1951), which impressed Albert *Einstein 
and led to their working association. His collaborative work 
with Yakir *Aharanov (1959) produced the still controversial 
claim that electrons sense a nearby magnetic field even when 
its strength is zero. Bohms later work, although founded on 
his experimental observations and interpretation of quan- 
tum mechanics, became increasingly philosophical and was 
influenced by his dialogue with the Indian spiritual master J. 
Krishnamurti. He was especially concerned with discerning 
patterns of cosmological order which transcend mechanistic 
descriptions of physics. He was a controversial figure with 
strong admirers and detractors. His ideas are intellectually 
accessible to non-specialists in his own books and F. David 
Peats biography, Infinite Potential (1996). 

[Michael Denman (2 nd ed.)] 

BOHM, HENRIK (1867-1936), Hungarian architect. His 
work includes thermal bath buildings (Szolnok in Hungary 
and Piestany in Slovakia), hotels, and the Torok Bank house 
(1906), a Secessionist landmark in Budapest. 

[Eva Kondor] 

BOHNEN, ELI AARON (1909-1992), U.S. Conservative 
rabbi. Bohnen was born in Toronto, Canada, and immigrated 
to the United States following his graduation from the Univer- 
sity of Toronto in 1931. He was ordained at the Jewish Theo- 
logical Seminary in 1935 and earned a Doctor of Hebrew Let- 
ters there in 1953. Bohnen served congregations as rabbi in 
Philadelphia (1935-39) an d Buffalo, New York (1939-48) but 
left his pulpit to serve as a chaplain with the U.S. Army in Eu- 
rope during World War 11. He was with the 42 nd (Rainbow) 
Infantry Division during the liberation of Dachau on April 29, 
1945, an experience that moved him to work as an advisor to 
the U.S. military regarding * displaced persons. He also wrote 
the Rainbow Haggadah for soldiers celebrating Passover on the 
battlefield. Returning to the United States, Bohnen moved to 
Providence to become rabbi of Temple Emanu-El (1948) and 
eventually president of the Rhode Island Board of Rabbis. As 
a member of the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish 
Law and Standards, Bohnen wrote responsa for the Conserva- 
tive movement reflecting his view that for some Jews halakhah 
had become an idol to be worshipped and that contemporary 
values should be considered in interpreting Jewish law. He 
served as president of the ^Rabbinical Assembly (1966-68) 
during the tumultuous times of the Vietnam War and urban 
race riots. He decried tensions within the American Jewish 
community and called for greater interdenominational co- 
operation, insisting that the breach with Orthodoxy was "of 
their making, not ours." Upon his retirement in 1973, Bohnen 
served as rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanu-El. 

bibliography: P.S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: 
A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1988). 

[Bezalel Gordon (2 nd ed.)] 



BOHR, NIELS HENRIK DAVID (1885-1962), Danish physi- 
cist and Nobel laureate. He was born in Copenhagen. His fa- 
ther was non- Jewish, a professor of physiology at the Univer- 
sity of Copenhagen, and his mother, nee Ella Adler, belonged 
to a prominent Jewish banking family. He obtained his doctor- 
ate at Copenhagen in 1911 with a thesis on "Investigations of 
Metals." In 1912, he worked with J.J. Thomson (the discoverer 
of the electron) at Cambridge, and then in Manchester with 
Ernest Rutherford, the discoverer of the atomic nucleus. In 
1913, Bohr produced the first of his series of papers which rev- 
olutionized conceptions of the structure of the atom. In 1916, 
Bohr became professor of chemical physics at the University 
of Copenhagen, and in 1920 head of the university s new In- 
stitute of Theoretical Physics. He participated in other impor- 
tant advances, such as the "Correspondence Principle" and the 
"Principle of Complementarity." In 1922, he was awarded the 
Nobel Prize, the youngest laureate up to that time. He helped 
to lead science through the most fundamental change of at- 
titude it has made since Galileo and Newton. In September 
1943 he and his family escaped the Nazis by going to Sweden 
in a fishing boat. In October he was taken to England in the 
bomb rack of an unarmed Mosquito plane. Bohr was "con- 
sultant" to Tube Alloys, the code name for the atomic bomb 
project. He had determined that the uranium atom which had 
been split by Hahn and Strassman in 1938 was the rare iso- 
tope u-235, a fact of major importance to the project. How- 
ever, Bohr saw the atom bomb as a threat to mankind. He was 
given the first Atoms-for- Peace prize of the Ford Foundation 
in 1956 and was chairman of the Danish Atomic Energy Com- 
mission. In the last fifteen years of his life, he was tireless in 
his work for peace. 

He took an active interest in the physics program of the 
Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovot which he visited 
on several occasions. 

bibliography: W. Pauli (ed.)> Niels Bohr and the Devel- 
opment of Physics (1955); S. Rozental (ed.), Niels Bohr; his Life and 
Work... (1967); R.E. Moore, Niels Bohr: the Man, his Science and the 
World they Changed (1966). 

[Samuel Aaron Miller] 

BO JAN, village in Ukraine, in the province of Bukovina; 
it belonged to Austria from 1774 to 1918 and to Romania from 
1918 to 1940. In 1807 there were only three Jewish families in 
Bojan, employed in agriculture. Its situation near the Rus- 
sian and Romanian borders contributed to the growth of the 
community, which numbered 781 in 1880 (14.9% of the to- 
tal population). It was first affiliated with the community 
of *Sadgora. An independent community was established 
in i860. Bojan became a hasidic center when the zaddik R. 
Isaac Fridman, a grandson of R. Israel of *Ruzhin, settled 
there in 1886. As a consequence of the influx of the Hasidim 
who settled near the zaddiks home, Bojan developed into an 
urban settlement. In 1913 the community numbered 2,573. It 
had a synagogue and four prayer houses. When the Russians 
occupied Bojan during World War 1, the Jewish quarter, in- 



42 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOKSER, BARUCH M. 



eluding the residence of the zaddik, was destroyed and most 
of the Jews there fled. R. Isaac Fridman fled to Vienna where 
he died. In 1930 there remained only 118 Jews. They were de- 
ported to Trans nistria in 1941. 

bibliography: S.J. Schulson, in: H. Gold (ed.), Geschichte 
der Juden in der Bukowina, 1 (1958), 85-88. 

[Eliyahu Feldman] 

BOJANOWO, small town in Poznan province, western 
Poland, founded in 1638. Jews were among its early settlers, 
and traded in textiles and hides. Jewish artisans were em- 
ployed there by Christians, despite protests from the guilds. 
For a long time the community was affiliated to that of 
*Leszno (Lissa). The first synagogue was erected in 1793; a new 
one was built in 1859. The Jewish population numbered 151 
in 1793, 311 in 1840, and 66 in 1905 (out of a total of 2,106). 
The talmudic scholar Julius *Theodor served as rabbi of 
Bojanowo. The community ceased to exist after World 
War 1. 

bibliography: A. Heppnerand J. Herzberg, Aus der Vergan- 
genheit und Gegenwart der Juden in den Posener Landen (1904-29), 
308-14. 

BOKANOWSKI, MAURICE (1879-1928), French politician. 
Born in Le Havre into a family of Russian immigrants, Bo- 
kanowski studied law in Paris. In 1914 he was elected to the 
Chamber of Deputies and on the outbreak of World War 1 
joined the French infantry. After the war he was reelected to 
the Chamber and became a member of the trade and finance 
commissions. He was appointed minister for the navy in 1924 
and from 1926 to 1927 was minister of commerce and indus- 
try, signing Frances first commercial treaty with Germany af- 
ter World War 1. He was killed in an airplane accident in 1928 
and was given a state funeral. 

bibliography: Dictionnaire de biographie francaise, 6 (1954), 

879-80. 

[Shulamith Catane] 

BOKROS-BIRMAN, DEZSO (Desiderius; 1889-1965), 
Hungarian sculptor and graphic artist. Bokros-Birman was 
noted for his realistic portraiture and his ability to portray 
character. He was born in Ujpest and studied in Budapest 
and Paris. He exhibited first with the keve (Association of 
Hungarian Creative and Industrial Artists) in 1918. Later he 
moved to Berlin, where he produced a series of lithographs 
entitled Job (1922). Bokros-Birman then returned to Budapest. 
During World War 11 he was a member of the anti-Fascist in- 
dependence movement and later executed a relief entitled In- 
dependent Hungary. 

Some of Bokros-Birmans better known works are The 
20-Year-Old Ady, Ujvdri Peter, and The Iron-worker. 

bibliography: The Statues of D. Bokros-Birman (1928), 
introd. by F. Karinthy; Bokros-Birman (Hung., 1949), introd. by E. 
Mihalyi. 

[Jeno Zsoldos] 



BOKSER, BARUCH M. (1945-1990), U.S. scholar of rabbin- 
ics in the formative period, the first seven centuries c.e.; son 
of Conservative rabbi and scholar Ben Zion *Bokser. Baruch 
Bokser was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 
1966), Jewish Theological Seminary of America (M.H.L./ 
Rabbi, 1971), and Brown University (Ph.D., Religious Stud- 
ies/History of Judaism, 1974). He taught at Brown University, 
the University of California at Berkeley, Dropsie College, and 
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He devoted his 
oeuvre to explaining the development of Judaism, identify- 
ing the shifts in the way ideas and institutions are presented 
and assessing the significance that these transformations had 
for the history of Judaism and the society of the Jews. His 
books include Samuels Commentary on the Mishnah: Its Na- 
ture, Form, and Content. Part One. Mishnayot in the Order of 
Zeraim (1975), showing how Babylonian rabbis related to the 
Mishnah, which won Brown University's Salo Baron Disserta- 
tion Prize in 1974; Post-Mishnaic Judaism in Transition: Samuel 
on Berakhot and the Beginnings ofGemara (1980), tracing the 
effort to move beyond Mishnah-commentary, linking Samu- 
els activities to their historical contexts; and The Origins of the 
Seder. The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism (1984), in 
which literary analysis leads to historical interpretation of the 
ritual of Passover. Here he demonstrates how literary analysis 
leads to a historical interpretation of the development of an 
important ritual in Judaism. In addition, he edited History of 
Judaism: The Next Ten Years (1980); and he translated Trac- 
tate Pesahim of the Palestinian Talmud into English, published 
posthumously as vol. 13 of The Talmud of the Land of Israel: 
A Preliminary Translation and Explanation, completed and 
edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman (1994). The Bokser-Schiff- 
man translation of Pesahim became the standard by which 
renditions of rabbinic texts into English are assessed. He was a 
master of the scholarly literature on every topic he addressed, 
and his "Annotated Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the 
Palestinian Talmud" (1970, reprinted in 1981 in J. Neusner, ed., 
The Study of Ancient Judaism 2:1-119) is the standard bibliogra- 
phy on that subject to 1970. Among his many articles and re- 
views, some of the more memorable are "The Wall Separating 
God and Israel" (Jewish Quarterly Review, yy8 (19 83), 3 49 -74), 
"Rabbinic Responses to Catastrophe: From Continuity to Dis- 
continuity) (Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish 
Research, 50 (1983), 37-61), and "Approaching Sacred Space" 
(Harvard Theological Review (1984)), which as a sequence as- 
sess how rabbis overcame the destruction of the Temple and 
yet preserved the memory of the lost center. His "Maal and 
Blessings over Food: Rabbinic Transformation of Cultic Ter- 
minology and Alternative Modes of Piety" (Journal of Biblical 
Literature 1981 100:557-74) treats justifications used to support 
a system of blessings to be recited on eating food. "Hanina ben 
Dosa and the Lizard: The Treatment of Charismatic Figures in 
Rabbinic Literature (Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress 
of Jewish Studies 1982 c:i-6 1982) and "Wonder- Working and 
the Rabbinic Tradition" (Journal for the Study of Judaism in 
the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 1985 16:2-13) show 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



43 



BOKSER, BEN ZION 



that different portrayals of religious leaders are tied to differ- 
ent self-images of rabbis on the degree to which a leader is 
to stand out from the community or serve as a model for em- 
ulation. His oeuvre joined erudition and disciplined imagi- 
nation to produce an enduring legacy of systematic learning. 
By the time of his early death, he had attained standing as 
one of the exemplary and influential scholars of ancient Ju- 
daism. 

[Jacob Neusner (2 nd ed.)] 

BOKSER, BEN ZION (1907-1984), U.S. Conservative rabbi 
and scholar. Bokser, born in Luboml, Poland, was raised in 
the United States. From 1933 he served as rabbi of the Forest 
Hills Jewish Center, one of the largest Conservative congrega- 
tions in New York City, a massive synagogue structure com- 
plete with a physical education complex, the veritable "shul 
with a pool" that was popular in the immediate post- World 
War 11 years. Aside from a brief stint as an Army chaplain dur- 
ing World War 11, he remained at the Forest Hills Jewish Cen- 
ter for half a century. His influence extended far beyond his 
congregation. He was a passionate supporter of liberal causes 
and took the courageous and deeply unpopular stance of 
supporting a housing project for lower income residents 
amidst the solidly middle class Jewish neighborhood of For- 
est Hills. 

He was also associate professor of homiletics at the Jew- 
ish Theological Seminary, and for many years editor of its Eter- 
nal Light radio program. He served on the Rabbinic Assembly 
Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and dissented from 
the r a ruling that permitted Jews to ride to synagogue on the 
Sabbath. He also wrote the unanimous ruling prohibiting cir- 
cumcision on days other than the eighth except on medically 
or halakhically acceptable grounds. 

Bokser s books, both popular and scholarly, include Phar- 
isaic Judaism in Transition (1935), a biography of R. Eliezer b. 
Hyrcanus; The Legacy of Maimonides (1950); From the World of 
the Cabbalah (1954, a study of the life and thought of R. Loew 
b. Bezalel (the Maharal) of Prague); Judaism: Profile of a Faith 
(1963); and Judaism and the Christian Predicament (1967), a 
study of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. 
His study and translation of some of Rabbi Abraham Isaac 
Kooks writings into English gave an American audience ac- 
cess to the revered mystic's thought. Published by Paulist Press, 
it gave a hearing to Kooks work among Christian scholars of 
mysticism. Bokser also wrote The Jewish Mystical Tradition 
(1981), a survey of Jewish mystical thought from the Bible to 
Rav Kook. He translated and edited two prayer books, the first 
for weekday, Sabbath, and festivals (1957) and the second for 
the High Holidays (1959), which were first used by his congre- 
gation and then elsewhere in the Conservative movement. His 
siddur was complete, unlike the Silberman prayer book that 
contained the Sabbath liturgy alone and was intended by the 
Hebrew Publishing Company to serve as the Conservative ver- 
sion of the Birnbaum Siddur used by Orthodox Jews in mid- 
century America. He also taught political science and religion 



at Queens College and was co-founder of its Center for Ethics 
and Public Policy. His son, Baruch *Bokser (1945-1990), was 
a scholar of rabbinics. 

[Jack Reimer / Michael Berenbaum (2 nd ed.)] 

BOLAFFI, MICHELE (or Michaele; 1768-1842), Italian mu- 
sician and composer. In 1793 he composed the music for the 
religious drama Simhat Mitzvah by Daniel *Terni, written for 
performance at the inauguration of the synagogue in Flor- 
ence: the music has not been found. Later, Bolaffl was active 
at the Leghorn synagogue, where his works continued to be 
performed until the early years of the 20 th century. His works 
are included in the i9 th -century music manuscripts of other 
Italian communities, notably that of Casale Monferrato. His 
setting to Psalm 121 is still sung in the Florence synagogue at 
festivals. Bolaffl also had a career as a secular musician. He 
went to England, where in 1809 he was employed as "Musi- 
cal Director to the Duke of Cambridge." He toured Germany 
in 1816 with the singer Angelica Catalani, and occupied for a 
short period the post of Koeniglicher Kapellmeister at Hanover. 
Between 1815 and 1818 he was in the service of Louis xvni as 
singer with the title "Musicien de S.M. le Roi de France." His 
compositions include an opera Saul, a Miserere for three voices 
and orchestra (1802), a "sonetto" on the death of Haydn (1809), 
settings for psalms, and other vocal compositions. He also 
wrote poems, an Italian adaptation of Solomon ibn *Gabirols 
Keter Malkhut under the title Teodia (1809), and Italian trans- 
lations of Jacques de Lille (1813) and Voltaire (1816). 

bibliography: C. Roth, in: jhset, 16 (1945-51), 223-4; H. 
Schirmann, in: Tazlil, 4 (1964), 32f.; Adler, Prat Mus, 125-8. 

[Israel Adler] 

BOLAFFIO, LEONE (1848-1940), Italian jurist. Born in 
Padua, Bolafflo was educated at the Padua talmudical college, 
and at the University of Padua. He practiced law in Venice for 
15 years before becoming a lecturer at the universities of Parma 
and Bologna. Bolafflo helped revive the study of commercial 
law in Italy and was a member of the Royal Commission for 
the Reform of the Commercial Code. His works on commer- 
cial law include Esegesi delVarticolo 58 del Codice di Commer- 
cio italiano (1897) and Diritto Commerciale (1918) which be- 
came standard textbooks. He also edited the Commentario al 
Codice di Commercio with Cesare *Vivante and founded the 
law review, La Temi Veneta. 

Bolafflo established the Italian Society for the Study of 
Stenography and advocated the introduction of the famous 
Gabelsberger shorthand system into the public schools of It- 
aly. He himself wrote a manual for this system. 

bibliography: Rotondi, in: Rivista di diritto privato, 10 

(1941), i5of. 

[Giorgio Romano] 

BOLEKHOV (Pol. Bolechow), city in W. Ukraine; from 1945 
to 1991 in the Ukrainian S.S.R. (formerly in *Galicia; from 1772 
to 1919 within Austria, subsequently in Poland). Municipal sta- 



44 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOLESLAV V 



tus was granted to Bolekhov in 1612 by the lord of the town, 
and the Jews living there were accorded the right to participate 
in municipal elections for the mayor and council. In 1780 the 
Austrian government founded a Jewish agricultural settlement 
near Bolekhov named New Babylon; although the Jews were 
shortly afterward superseded by Germans, the name was re- 
tained. Jewish occupations in Bolekhov in the 18 th century in- 
cluded trade in Hungarian wines, cattle, horses, and salt from 
the local mines. Later they extended to other trades and crafts. 
Industrial undertakings established by Jews included timber 
and other mills, tanneries, and furniture, soap, and candle 
factories. The oil industry founded in Bolekhov after World 
War 1, and its position as a summer resort, also provided 
sources of Jewish incomes. Bolekhov was a cradle of the Jewish 
Enlightenment movement (*Haskalah) in eastern Galicia, the 
Jews there taking an interest in Polish and other foreign lan- 
guages even in the 18 th century. Prominent among its leaders 
were Dov Ber *Birkenthal, author of a famous autobiography, 
and Solomon *Rubin, principal of the modern Jewish school, 
where both Hebrew and German were taught. 

The Jews formed a considerable majority of the popula- 
tion until World War 11. In 1900 there were 3,323 Jewish in- 
habitants (78% of the total); in 1925, 2,435. I n elections for the 
Austrian parliament (1867 through 1906), Bolekhov formed 
part of a constituency with largely Jewish voters. In 1931 there 

were 2,986 Jews. 

[Nathan Michael Gelber] 

Holocaust Period 

When World War 11 broke out, Bolekhov came under Soviet 
occupation until July 2, 1941, when the town was occupied by 
Slovak and Ukrainian units under German command. The 
German commander established a Judenrat, headed by Dr. 
Reifeisen, who shortly afterward committed suicide. The Jews 
were segregated in a ghetto established in the autumn of 1941 
and the intolerable living conditions there were aggravated 
by the arrival of refugees from the villages in the district. Re- 
lief was organized with great difficulty, and by the spring of 
1942 most of them had died of starvation. Some Jews were 
employed in the local tanneries. Later, Jews were employed 
in lumber work at a special labor camp. In late October 1941, 
the German police seized over 1,850 Jews. After being tortured 
for 24 hours, some succumbed and the rest were brought to a 
mass grave in the Tanjawa forest and shot. The second mass 
liquidation took place in early August 1942 when a manhunt 
was conducted jointly by the Ukrainian and Jewish police 
for three days. The victims were herded into the courtyard of 
the city hall, where some 500 persons were murdered by the 
Ukrainians and some 2,000 dispatched by freight trains to 
*Belzec death camp where they perished. By 1943 only 1,000 
Jews remained in the ghetto, in the work camp, and a few in 
the Jewish police. These were gradually murdered and only a 
few managed to escape to the neighboring forests. Some joined 
the partisans, while others perished there during the first few 
weeks. By the time of the Soviet conquest (spring of 1944) only 
a handful of Jews remained alive. In the district of Bolekhov, 



there was a group of Jewish partisan fighters who operated 
under the command of a Ukrainian communist. 

[Danuta Dombrowska] 

bibliography: B. Wasiutynski, Ludnosc zydowska wPolsce 
w w. xix i xx (1930), 122; Y. Eshel and M.H. Eshel, Sefer ha-Zikkaron 
li-Kedoshei Bolehov (1957). 

°BOLESLAV V ("The Pious"; 1221-1279), Polish prince, son 
of Ladislas Odonic of the Piast dynasty. Boleslav was prince 
of Great Poland from 1239, for the first ten years in conjunc- 
tion with his brother. In 1257, after many vicissitudes, he suc- 
ceeded in establishing his rule over the whole of Great Poland. 
During his wars against the Teutonic Order and the rulers of 
Brandenburg he captured Gdansk (Danzig). The appellation 
"Pious" denotes Boleslavs good relations with the Church. 
During his reign Poland was invaded by the Mongols who left 
the country in ruin after their retreat. Boleslav, like other Pol- 
ish rulers of the period, invited settlers from Germany, includ- 
ing Jews, to rehabilitate the country, granting various conces- 
sions and guarantees to the new settlers. This situation, and 
the policy to which it gave rise, motivated Boleslav to grant a 
charter to the Jews of Great Poland, issued on Sept. 8, 1264. It 
is patterned after, and mainly transcribed from, the charters 
granted to Jews in Austria in 1244 and Bohemia in 1254. Also 
known as the Statute of Kalisz, it was the prototype for sub- 
sequent Polish legislation concerning the Jews in the Middle 
Ages, such as that of *Casimir the Great. 

The original text of the Statute of Kalisz has been lost, but 
its content is conveyed in the document of 1506 of the chancel- 
lor Jan Laski. About half of the 36 articles of the Statute con- 
cern the legal status of the Jews, who were regarded as belong- 
ing to the prince s treasury (cf. art. 29: "Whoever robs a Jew. . . 
shall be considered as robbing Our treasure"). The Jews were 
protected against the *blood libel. They, their families, their 
possessions, and their institutions (synagogues, cemeteries) 
were under the protection of the prince (arts. 8-10, 14, 29) and 
subject to his jurisdiction (art. 8 denies the municipality any 
juridical authority over the Jews). The other articles relate to 
Jewish economic activities, and attest the rulers special inter- 
est in Jewish credit transactions (see *Moneylending) and their 
organization. Two articles deal with the commercial activity 
of the Jews. Four articles original to the Statute of Kalisz, i.e., 
not adopted from earlier documents of this kind, are article 
33, permitting the purchase of a horse from a Jew in daytime 
only; article 34, prohibiting mintm asters from accusing Jews 
of forging coins; article 35, compelling their Christian neigh- 
bors to assist Jews if attacked at night; and article 36, permit- 
ting Jews to trade in provisions. 

bibliography: R. Hube, Przywilej zydowski Boleslawa 
(1880); Ph. Bloch, Die Generalprivilegien der polnischen Judenschaft 
(1892), 102-20; I. Schipper, Studya nad stosunkami gospodarczymi 
Zydow Polsce podczas Sredniowiecza (1911); J. Sieradzki, in: Osiem- 
nascie wiekow Kalisza, 1 (i960), nos. 135-42. add. bibliogra- 
phy: S.A. Cygielman, Yehudei Polin ve-Lita ad Shenat T"H [1648] 

(1991), 47-60. 

[Arthur Cygielman] 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



45 



BOLESLAVSKI, ISAAC 



BOLESLAVSKI, ISAAC (1919-1977), Russian chess grand- 
master. Boleslavski was born in Ukraine. He established him- 
self early as one of the leading players in the U.S.S.R. He 
achieved his greatest success in the Candidates' Tournament 
at Budapest in 1950, where he shared first prize with David 
*Bronstein. The latter won the play-off and thus qualified to 
challenge Mikhail *Botvinnik. From that time on Boleslavski 
distinguished himself in important tournaments. He also 
achieved celebrity as an analyst of chess openings, and many 
important variations resulted from his experiments in prac- 
tical play. 

[Gerald Abrahams] 

BOLIVIA, South American republic; population: 8,724,156 
(2004). Jewish population: c. 600. 

History of Jewish Settlement 

Desperate to escape the increasingly vehement persecution 
in their homelands, thousands of refugees from Nazi-domi- 
nated Central Europe, the majority of them Jews, found ref- 
uge in Latin America in the 1930s. Bolivia became a principal 
recipient of this refugee influx by the end of the decade when 
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico - traditional "countries 
of choice" for European immigration - closed their gates or 
applied severe restrictions to the entrance of newcomers. In- 
deed, in the panic months following the German Anschluss of 
Austria in March 1938 and Kristallnacht in November of that 
year, Bolivia was one of very few remaining places in the entire 
world to accept Jewish refugees. In the short period between 
then and the end of the first year of World War 11, some 20,000 
refugees, primarily from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslo- 
vakia, entered Bolivia - more than in Canada, Australia, New 
Zealand, South Africa, and India combined. When the war 
ended, a second, smaller wave of immigrants, mostly East 
European Holocaust survivors, displaced relatives of previous 
refugees, and Polish Jews who had fled to Shanghai after 1939 
and abandoned it in the wake of the Communist takeover, ar- 
rived in Bolivia. (Also in these postwar years, a small number 
of Nazis who were fleeing or had help escaping prosecution in 
Europe - the best known among them being Klaus Barbie - 
came to Bolivia.) The new immigrants settled primarily in La 
Paz, a city more than 12,500 feet above sea level, as well as in 
Cochabamba, Oruro, Sucre, and in small mining and tropical 
agricultural communities throughout the land. 

In Bolivia, the refugees began to reconstruct a version of 
the world that they had been forced to abandon. Their own 
origins and social situations were diverse in Central Europe, 
ranging across generational, class, educational, and political 
differences and incorporating various professional, craft, and 
artistic backgrounds. Some of them had at one time been en- 
gineers, doctors, lawyers, musicians, actors, and artists; others 
were skilled and unskilled workers whose living had been in- 
terrupted by Nazi exclusionary decrees. Although most peo- 
ple who came to Bolivia were Jews, or were married to Jews, 
a significant minority were non-Jewish political refugees: 
Communists, Socialists, and others persecuted by the Nazi 



regime. Jews themselves differed greatly in the degree of their 
identification with their religion and its traditions. There were 
Zionists, atheists, Orthodox believers, High Holiday Jews, 
and no n- practitioners among them. They shared a common 
identity as Jews only in the sense, perhaps, that they had all 
been defined as "Jews" from the outside - that the Nazis had 
"other ed" them as Jews. 

No matter what their background differences had been in 
Europe, the vast majority of refugees arrived in South America 
in dire straits, with few personal possessions and very little 
money. This in itself had a leveling effect, cutting across their 
previous class distinctions. But other factors, also helped to 
create a sense of collective identity among them, aiding in 
their adjustment and survival. Their common history of per- 
secution was certainly one of these. Each and every refugee 
had been identified as undesirable, stripped of citizenship and 
possessions. Despite differences in the details of their particu- 
lar experiences, they were all "in the same boat." The war back 
in Europe, and the fact that so many of them had relatives and 
friends from whom they had been separated, were ever-pres- 
ent realities of which they were collectively conscious and that 
bonded them together. They kept themselves and each other 
informed of news about the war from accounts in the press 
and radio, and, they shared efforts to discover the fate of those 
left behind. In this regard, the German language (which they 
spoke at home and among themselves), was their vehicle of 
inquiry, information, and unity, allowing them to communi- 
cate intimately and to express themselves with a degree of fa- 
miliarity that most could never attain in the Spanish language 
of their surroundings. 

But ultimately, it was Austro-German Jewish bourgeois 
society, the cultural end-product of 19 th century Jewish eman- 
cipation in Central Europe, that gave the new arrivals a model 
for emulation and a common locus for identification in their 
place of refuge. Indeed, at the very time when that dynamic 
social and cultural amalgam was being ruthlessly and system- 
atically destroyed by the Nazis, the Jewish refugees in Bolivia 
tried to recall and revive a version of it in a land thousands 
of miles from their home; in a country that offered them a 
haven, but in which many of them felt themselves as mere 
sojourners. 

Alto Peru, the region that became Bolivia after gaining its 
independence from Spain in 1824, had once before been the 
refuge of people escaping religious intolerance and persecu- 
tion in Europe. In the course of the 16 th century, and during 
the extended, often brutal sway of the Spanish Inquisition, 
thousands of New Christians, or *Crypto-Jews - persons of 
Jewish origin who had been converted to Christianity by force 
or prudent choice of their own - left the Iberian peninsula; 
clandestinely or openly, and many sought haven in Spain's 
Latin American colonies. Bringing badly needed technical 
and entrepreneurial skills with them, a number of Crypto- Jews 
settled around the silver-mining areas of Potosi and in centers 
of trade and commerce like Chuquisaca (later Sucre), Santa 
Cruz, and Tarija. Over the years, some of these Crypto-Jews, 



46 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOLIVIA 



or their offspring, intermarried with local Christians and were 
integrated into the Catholic establishment. In the process, the 
background religious "stain" that had made them identifi- 
able as "outsiders" was blurred if not eradicated. But traces of 
their Sephardi ancestry survived - discernible both in family 
names and in customs of Jewish origin that were perpetuated 
for generations, despite the loss of their original meaning. Un- 
til well into the first decades of the 20 th century, for example, 
it was the custom for women in some families in Santa Cruz 
to light candles on Friday evening, a Jewish ritual inaugurat- 
ing the Sabbath, and for persons associated with some of the 
oldest and most distinguished "colonial" families in Sucre to 
maintain a semi-secluded seven-day deep mourning for their 
dead that, in form if not substance, bore a great resemblance 
to the Jewish mourning practice oishiva. Ancient candlesticks 
and silver objects of Sephardi origin, as well as incunabula in- 
scribed in Hebrew, were passed down within some of Sucre's 
families for generations. 

But despite the early presence of Crypto-Jews in Bolivia's 
colonial past, and relics of Judaic practices and beliefs, few - if 
any - Jews seem to have emigrated to the country in the first 
century of its independence. In this respect Bolivia was quite 
different from its more accessible and economically attrac- 
tive South American neighbors like ^Argentina, and ^Brazil, 
whose governments had periodically encouraged "white set- 
tler" immigration from Europe, and which developed substan- 
tial Jewish communities in the course of the 19 th and early 20 th 
centuries. A few East European Jews did trickle into Bolivia 
in the early 1900s, fleeing persecution in Poland, pogroms 
in Russia in the aftermath of the failed revolution of 1905, or 
in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. But be- 
fore the rise of Nazism very few Jews, perhaps fewer than a 
hundred from Alsace, Poland, and Russia had settled in this 
Andean land. 

In the wake of the large Jewish refugee influx in the late 
1930s, some resentments were generated and fueled among 
Bolivians against the immigrants by pro-Nazi provocateurs, 
especially after the discovery that many refugees had entered 
the country with visas bought illegally from Bolivian officials 
in Europe or under false pretences - with agricultural visas 
that stipulated that they would be engaged in rural land set- 
tlement and agricultural development. In fact, while many 
immigrants did receive visas as agricultural workers, the ma- 
jority of them established themselves in the urban centers, in 
commerce and industry. Several colonization projects were 
attempted, however, under the auspices of the Sociedad Col- 
onizadora de Bolivia (Socobo), founded in 1940, and with 
the help of the tin magnate Mauricio *Hochschild. The lat- 
ter spent almost $1,000,000 between 1940 and 1945 on an 
agricultural development project at Coroico; but, like an ear- 
lier one in the Chapare jungles, it failed. Climatic conditions 
were exceedingly difficult, and there was a dearth of roads to 
suitable markets. The early years of the Jewish community 
in Bolivia were marked by difficult economic conditions, es- 
pecially for those who did not own business enterprises. Be- 



tween January 1939 and December 1942 $160,000 were dis- 
bursed for relief by the ^American Jewish Joint Distribution 
Committee, by the Sociedad de Proteccion de los Inmigrantes 
Israelitas, and by Mauricio Hochschild. The majority of the 
immigrants entered manufacturing and trade and ultimately 
played a prominent role in the development of industry, im- 
ports and exports, and in the free professions. By the fall of 
!939> when immigration reached its peak, organized Jewish 
communities could already be found in La Paz and in Coch- 
abamba. The first organization to be founded was the Circulo 
Israelita (1935) by East European Jews, followed by the Ger- 
man Comunidad Israelita de Bolivia. During the next few 
years other organizations were formed, such as B'nai B'rith, 
the Federacion Sionista Unida de Bolivia, Wizo, and Macabi, 
with the Comite Central Judio de Bolivia coming to serve as 
the representative roof organization. Under the auspices of 
these groups, various communal services were established 
in the 1940s: the Chevra Kaddisha, the Cementerio Israelita, 
Bikkur Holim, a kinderheim y and a home for the aged. The La 
Paz community also established and maintained the Colegio 
Boliviano Israelita, a comprehensive school with kindergar- 
ten, primary, and secondary grades. Attracting Jewish as well 
as non- Jewish students because of its excellent academic pro- 
gram, the school exists even today, despite the drastic decline 
in the Jewish population of the country. 

Starting with the end of World War 11, continuing with 
the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and accelerat- 
ing in the 1950s, the demographic trend that had been marked 
by a sharp increase in the Jewish population of Bolivia was re- 
versed. Large numbers of the Jewish wartime immigrants and 
their children left the country, either to move to other "more 
Europeanized" Latin American countries like Argentina or 
Brazil, to the United States, to Israel, or back to their countries 
of origin in Europe. The consistent exodus was stimulated by 
a variety of factors, including the political instability in the 
country. The 1952 revolution that brought to power the Na- 
tional Revolutionary Party (the mnr, which had been close to 
the Nazis during the war) aroused anxieties in the Jewish com- 
munity. These fears were allayed, however, when Jewish rights 
were not affected. Economic insecurity, health hazards caused 
by climatic difficulties, and the lack of adequate facilities for 
higher education also motivated the emigration trend. 

The Contemporary Situation 

By the early 1990s, there were around 700 Jews left in Bolivia. 
That number has declined even more, as many members 
of Bolivia's Jewish younger generation decide to emigrate - 
either temporarily, to seek higher educational or vocational 
training elsewhere, or on a permanent basis. As in the past, 
the majority of remaining Jews live in the capital, La Paz, 
but there are smaller communities in Santa Cruz and Co- 
chabamba. The Circulo Israelita, the central Jewish com- 
munal organization, now embodies both of its predecessors, 
the Circulo Israelita de La Paz established by East European 
immigrants and the German Comunidad Israelita de Bolivia. 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



47 



BOLM, ADOLPH RUDOLPHOVICH 



There are synagogues and a rabbi in La Paz, and synagogues in 
Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. Economically, members of the 
community are now relatively well to do, engaged in manu- 
facturing, merchandizing, import and export trade, and the 
professions. 

Relations with Israel 

Bolivia was among the supporters of the 1947 un resolution 
on the partition of Palestine. Subsequently, a Bolivian repre- 
sentative was named to the Palestine Commission. In ensu- 
ing debates at the United Nations, notably those on the ref- 
ugee problem, despite changing governments and resultant 
differences of policy, Bolivia was remarkably consistent in 
maintaining a friendly attitude to Israel. Israel's first minis- 
ter presented his credentials in 1957, and an embassy was es- 
tablished in 1964; Bolivia, in turn, established its embassy in 
Jerusalem in the same year. The two countries engaged in a 
variety of assistance programs. A technical cooperation agree- 
ment between the two countries, signed in 1962, provides for 
an agricultural mission of Nahal officers that has been active 
in Bolivia in cooperation with the Bolivian army in the fields 
of agricultural settlement and training. Bolivian students on 
scholarships in Israel included irrigation engineers and youth 
leaders. An effort in the private sphere is a joint study in me- 
dicinal tropical plants undertaken by the School of Pharma- 
cology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and its Boliv- 
ian counterpart. 

bibliography: Mangan, in: Commentary, 14 (1952), 99- 
106; N. Lorch, Ha-Nahar ha-Lohesh (1969), passim; Asociacion 
Filantropica Israelita, Buenos Aires, Zehn Jahre Aufbauarbeit in Su- 
edamerika (Ger. and Sp., 1943), 172-98. add. bibliography: L. 
Spitzer, Hotel Bolivia: the Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Na- 
zism (1998); H. Klein, Bolivia: the Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Soci- 
ety (2 nd ed., 1992). 

[Netanel Lorch / Leo Spitzer (2 nd ed.)] 

BOLM, ADOLPH RUDOLPHOVICH (1884-1951), U.S. 
ballet dancer and director. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, 
Bolm was awarded a first prize at the Imperial Ballet and soon 
drew public attention with his brilliant dancing and mime. 
He toured European capitals with Anna Pavlova in 1908 and 
1909, and in 1914 went to the U.S. as leading dancer and cho- 
reographer in Diaghilev's company. He then settled in New 
York, where he formed the Bolm Ballet Intime. He produced 
Le Coq d'Or at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918, danced the 
title role in Petrouchka, and established himself as a choreog- 
rapher. He became maitre de ballet at the Chicago Opera in 
1922. In 1931, in Hollywood, his ballet Iron Foundry (to music 
by Mossolov) attracted audiences of fifteen to twenty thou- 
sand at a time. In 1932 Bolm was appointed ballet master at 
the San Francisco Opera, and held the post for five years. He 
later directed a ballet school. 

bibliography: C.W. Beaumont, Complete Book of Ballets 
(1937), 784-90 and index; Dance Magazine, 37 (Jan. 1963), 44-50; 
New York Times (April 17, 1951), 29. 



BOLOGNA, city of north central Italy. There is documented 
evidence of a Jewish presence since 1353, when the Jewish 
banker Gaius Finzi from Rome took up his residence in the 
quartier of Porta Procola. In the second half of the 14 th cen- 
tury around 15 Jewish families settled in the city. In 1416, at 
the time of the papal election, a vigilance committee of Jewish 
notables from various parts of Italy met in Bologna to discuss 
the submission of an official letter to Pope Martin v in order 
to improve the condition of the Jews. In 1417 the bishop of Bo- 
logna compelled the Jews there to wear the Jewish *badge and 
to limit their activities as loan bankers. The restrictions were 
confirmed in 1458. Nevertheless, the community flourished. 
In 1473 ^Bernardino da Feltre secured the establishment of a 
public loan bank (*Monte di Pieta) in order to undermine the 
activities of the Jews. It functioned for a short time only, but 
further attempts were made to establish one in 1505 and 1532. 
Thanks to new waves of immigration, the Jewish community 
of Bologna increased to around 650 in these years. They were 
involved in loan banking, commerce (silk, secondhand tex- 
tiles, jewelry), medicine, and cultural life. 

In the 15 th - 16 th centuries the Bologna community in- 
cluded many rabbis and noted scholars, including Obadiah 
*Sforno, Jacob *Mantino, Azariah de' *Rossi, and Samuel *Ar- 
chivolti. There were 11 synagogues in Bologna in the middle of 
the 16 th century, even more than in Rome. In 1546 there already 
existed two fraternal societies, the "Hevrat ha-Nizharim" and 
the "Hevrat Rahamim." 

A Hebrew press printed the Book of Psalms in 1477 (its 
first book), with commentary by D. Kimhi, in an edition of 
300 copies. Among the printers were Meister Joseph and his 
son, Hayyim Mordecai, and Hezekiah of Ventura. About the 
same time - between 1477 and 1480 - they printed two small- 
size editions of the Book of Psalms. 

Two other Hebrew printing presses were set up in Bolo- 
gna, the first under the supervision of ^Abraham b. Hayyim 
dei Tintori of Pesaro (see ^Incunabula) operating in 1477-82 
and the second of silk makers and intellectuals (among them 
Obadiah Sforno) operating in 1537-41. In 1482 the first edi- 
tion of the Pentateuch with Onkelos and Rashi and the Five 
Scrolls with commentaries were printed. Only the Pentateuch 
bears the city's name. In 1537 a siddur of the Roman rite, mostly 
on parchment, and some other works were printed (i.e., Or 
Ammim by Sforno in 1537 and Piskei Halakhot by Moses Re- 
canati in 1538) and in 1540/41 a mahzor of the same rite ap- 
peared with commentary by Joseph ^Treves. The university 
library owns an important collection of Hebrew manuscripts 
and early editions. 

Bologna reverted to direct papal rule in 1513, and not 
long after the community began to suffer from the conse- 
quences of the Counter-Reformation. In 1553 the Talmud and 
other Hebrew works were burned on the instructions of Pope 
Julius in. In 1556 *Paul iv issued an order confining Jewish 
residence to a ghetto. In 1566 the ghetto was established in a 
central area of the city, behind the Two Towers. Pius v estab- 



48 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOLOGNA 



lished a House of ^Catechumens in Bologna in 1568 and in 
the following year Bologna was among the towns of the pa- 
pal states from which the Jews were banished. More than 800 
Jews were forced to leave, paying in addition the enormous 
fine of 40,000 scudi. The cemetery was given to the nuns of S. 
Pietro, who completely destroyed it in order to use the land. 
As a result of the apparently more liberal attitude of Sixtus v, 
Jews returned to Bologna in 1586, but in 1593, 900 Jews were 
expelled again by Clement viii. On this occasion they re- 
moved the bones of their dead, which they reburied in the 
cemetery of Pie ve di Cento. 

Subsequently Jews were not able to settle officially in 
Bologna for two centuries. Foreign Jews occasionally were 
allowed accommodation in the central Osteria del Cappello 
Rosso inn. In 1796, in the period after the French conquests, 
several Jews went to live there. They later suffered from the 
renewed papal rule, and their position progressively deterio- 
rated until in 1836 some of them who belonged to the Italian 
Risorgimento movement were again expelled. It was in Bolo- 
gna that the kidnapping of the child Edgardo *Mortara took 
place in 1858, an affair that aroused the civilized world. When 
the city was annexed to Piedmont in 1859, equal rights were 
granted to the Jews and they fully participated to the cultural, 
economic, and social life of the city: Luigi Luzzati and Attilio 
Muggia were among the founders of two important charitable 
institutions, respectively the "Societa cooperativa degli operai" 
(1867) and the "Casa provinciale del lavoro (1887)"; Amilcare 
Zamorani founded and owned the daily newspaper II Resto 
del Carlino (1885). The family of Lazzaro Carpi, who partici- 
pated actively in the Italian Risorgimento, strongly supported 
the Jewish community and organized the first prayer room in 
their home in 1859. During the 1870s the Jewish community 
established a new synagogue active until 1929 when a new one 
was built in the same place. 

[Attilio Milano / Federica Francesconi (2 nd ed.)] 

At the beginning of the 20 th century, about 900 Jews, mostly 
business and professional people, lived in Bologna. In January 
1938, months before the anti-Jewish laws, 77 Resto del Carlino, 
the local daily newspaper founded by Amilcare Zamorani, 
initiated a campaign against the Jews. One of the first signs of 
the new antisemitic atmosphere was the changing of the name 
of the Via de* Giudei to the Via delle Due Torri. With the on- 
set of the anti- Jewish laws in September, Jewish teachers and 
students were forced to leave the public schools. The munici- 
pality established an elementary school with two classes for 
Jewish pupils only, while the Jewish community set up three 
sections for middle and upper school. Fifty-one Jewish pro- 
fessors were retired from the University of Bologna, including 
11 tenured professors and 40 others. Also forced to leave were 
492 foreign Jewish students. Italian Jewish students already 
enrolled at the university were allowed to finish, but no new 
Italian Jewish students were admitted. In addition, 17 doctors, 
14 lawyers, and three journalists were no longer permitted to 



exercise their professions. With only a few exceptions, there 
were no reactions or manifestations of dissent on the part of 
their "Aryan' colleagues. 

After the German occupation of Italy in September 1943, 
the persecution in Bologna became deadly. With the collabo- 
ration of Fascist activists, Nazi raids, roundups, and deporta- 
tions of Jews to death camps were frequent. Jewish properties 
and possessions were confiscated, and only partially returned 
after liberation. One hundred and fourteen Jews from Bologna 
were deported to Auschwitz, where nearly all of them died. 
About half of them passed through the transit camp of Fos- 
soli. Eighty-four of the 114 belonged to the Jewish commu- 
nity. Among them was Rabbi Alberto Orvieto. Their names 
are engraved on the plaque on the facade of the synagogue in 
Via Mario Finzi. The other 30 deportees had been baptized or 
had chosen not to register themselves in the community. In 
addition to the 114, a number of deported Jews from outside 
Bologna were captured there. 

Even before September 1943, a section of the Delegazione 
assistenza emigrati (Delasem) functioned in Bologna to help 
foreign Jews. It was directed by Mario Finzi, who during the 
German occupation produced false identity cards for Italian 
and foreign Jews in the Bologna and Florence area and de- 
livered them through Don Leto Casini. Finzi was arrested in 
April and deported to Auschwitz in May 1944, from where he 
did not return. Eugenio Heiman, president of the Jewish com- 
munity after the war, was also active in Delasem. 

Many Jews were able to hide and save themselves with 
false documents provided by Delasem or the Resistance. 
About 20 Jews from Bologna became partisans and fought 
especially in the brigades of Giustizia e Libertd, linked to the 
Partito d'Azione. Several lost their lives in the struggle, includ- 
ing the lawyer Mario Jacchia, commander of northwestern 
Emilia, and 13 -year-old Franco Cesana (1931-1944), believed 
to be the youngest Italian partisan. 

The Jewish community was reconstituted in 1945. The 
synagogue, destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in 1943, was 
rebuilt under the direction of Eng. Guido Muggia, the grand- 
son of the original builder, and inaugurated in 1954. By 1990 
the number of Jews was reduced to 230 with a number of 
Israelis studying at the University. 

[Anna Grattarola (2 nd ed.)] 

bibliography: Rava, in: L'Educatore Israelita, 20 (1872), 
237-42, 295-301; 21 (1873), 73-79, i40-4> V4-6; 22 (1874), 19-21, 111-3, 
296-8; Sonne, in: huca, 16 (1941), 35-98; Roth, Italy, index; Milano, 
Italia, index; H.D. Friedberg, Toledot ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Italyah 
(1956 2 ), 28ft.; D.W. Amram, Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy (1909), 
47f.; A.M. Habermann, Ha-Sefer ha-Ivri be-Hitpattehuto (1968), 84, 
121; L. Ruggini, in: Studia et Documenta Historia et Juris, 25 (1959), 
186-308 (It.), index, add. bibliography: I. Pini, "Famiglie, inse- 
diamenti e banchi ebraici a Bologna e nel Bolognese nella seconda 
meta del Trecento," in: Quaderni Storici, 22/54 (1983), 783-814; M.G. 
Muzzarelli (ed.), Verso Vepilogo di una convivenza: gli ebrei a Bologna 
nel xvi secolo (1996); N.S. Onofri, Ebrei efascismo a Bologna (1989); 
L. Bergonzini, La svastica a Bologna settembre 1943-aprile 1945 (1998): 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



49 



BOLOTOWSKY, ILYA 



D. Mirri and S. Arieti, La cattedra negata (2002). A. Grattarola, "Gli 
ebrei a Bologna tra xviii e xx secolo," in: F. Bonilauri and V. Maugeri 
(ed.)> Museo Ebraico di Bologna. Guida ai percorsi storici (2002); L. 
Pardo, La sinagoga di Bologna. Vicende e prospettive di un luogo e di 
una presenza ebraica (2001). 

BOLOTOWSKY, ILYA (1907-1981), U.S. painter, sculptor, 
and filmmaker. Born in St. Petersburg, Bolotowsky was draw- 
ing portraits and landscapes at the age of five. At 16 he arrived 
in the United States via Constantinople, where his family had 
lived for two and a half years. After studying at the National 
Academy of Design from 1924 to 1930, he was hired by the 
Federal Art Projects Works Progress Administration in 1934. 
Under the auspices of the wpa, Bolotowsky painted several re- 
alist works, but soon he turned to abstraction. As a wpa artist, 
he created one of the first abstract murals, for the Williams- 
burg Housing Project in Brooklyn (1936). Another abstract 
mural followed, located in the Health Building in the Hall of 
Medical Science at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair. 

In 1933 he began to paint abstractly, influenced by the 
Neo-Plastic works of Piet Mondrian. After his initial reaction, 
which he described as "shock and even anger," Bolotowsky be- 
gan to privilege the tensions of pure color and simplified form 
in vertical and horizontal arrangements, often on shaped can- 
vases since 1947. In 1961 he began to make sculpture. These 
painted columns, as Bolotowsky titled them, were a natural 
outgrowth of his interest in the architectonic forms of Neo- 
Plasticism. 

He co-founded "The Ten" in 1935, a group of artists that 
included Mark *Rothko and *Ben-Zion. The Ten was com- 
mitted to overthrowing the Whitney Museums hegemony 
and promulgation of representational art of the American 
scene. The group first showed their work collectively in 1938. 
Bolotowsky also co-founded the American Abstract Artists in 
1936. Although his work did not employ Jewish subjects, Bo- 
lotowsky showed an abstract painting at the first exhibition of 
the World Alliance of Yiddish Culture (ykuf) in 1938. 

He served in World War 11 in the United States Air 
Force as a translator stationed in Alaska, during which time 
he complied a Russian-English military dictionary. After the 
war Bolotowsky taught at various American universities, in- 
cluding Black Mountain College (1946-48) and the Univer- 
sity of Wyoming (1948-57). His best-known student is Ken- 
neth Noland. 

He made experimental films, including Metanoia y which 
won first prize in 1963 at the Midwest Film Festival at the Uni- 
versity of Chicago. Bolotowsky published articles about his 
work and compiled the Russian-English Dictionary of Paint- 
ing and Sculpture (1962). 

bibliography: I. Bolotowsky, Leo n a rdo (July 1969): 221-30; 
I. Bolotowsky, llya Bolotowsky (1974). 

[Samantha Baskind (2 nd ed.)] 

BOLTEN, JOSHUA B. (1954- ), director of the Office of 
Management and Budget and a member of George W Bushs 



cabinet from June 2003. Bolten was born in Washington, dc, 
and received his B.A. with distinction from Princeton Uni- 
versity s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International 
Affairs (1976) and his J.D. from Stanford Law School (1980), 
where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. Immedi- 
ately after law school, he served as a law clerk at the U.S. Dis- 
trict Court in San Francisco. During the fall semester of 1993, 
Bolten taught international trade at Yale Law School. 

During the administration of President George H.W 
Bush, Bolten served for three years as general counsel to the 
U.S. trade representative and one year in the White House as 
deputy assistant to the president for legislative affairs. During 
the Reagan administration from 1985 to 1989, he worked on 
Capitol Hill, where he was international trade counsel to the 
U.S. Senate Finance Committee, working closely with Sena- 
tor Robert Packwood (r-or.). Earlier, Bolten was in private 
law practice with O'Melveny & Myers, and worked in the le- 
gal office of the U.S. State Department. He also served as ex- 
ecutive assistant to the director of the Kissinger Commission 
on Central America. From 1993, he was executive director, 
legal and government affairs, for Goldman Sachs Interna- 
tional in London. 

Bolten joined the Bush campaign during the primary 
season and from March 1999 through the November 2000 
election served as policy director of the campaign. His tran- 
sition to the administration as assistant to the president and 
deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House was seam- 
less. Bolten is considered a Bush loyalist who views his job as 
advancing the Presidents agenda of tax cuts and private Social 
Security investment accounts for younger Americans. He is 
that rare cabinet member who is more comfortable working 
behind the scenes where he is regarded as most effective; he 
avoids the limelight and the press wherever possible. As the 
highest-ranking Jew in the Bush administration, he handled 
some specifically Jewish assignments within the administra- 
tion - public and private - working closely with the Jewish 
liaison, appearing at the national Hanukkah can die -lighting 
ceremony, and taking a personal, familial interest in the ^Ho- 
locaust Memorial Museum. In April 2006 Bolten became chief 
of staff to President George W Bush, the first Jew to hold that 
office and thus the highest-ranking Jew in the history of the 
White House. 

His father, seymour bolten (1917-85), was believed to be 
the highest-ranking Jew among known cia agents of his time. 
An authority on international drug trafficking, he was a spe- 
cial adviser to the White House on narcotics and a senior ad- 
viser on law enforcement policy at the Department of Treasury 
(1981-85). At the White House, he staffed the Presidents Com- 
mission on the Holocaust for President Jimmy ^Carter. 

[Michael Berenbaum (2 nd ed.)] 

BOLZANO (Ger. Bolzen), capital of Bolzano province, north- 
ern Italy. Jewish moneylenders began to settle in Bolzano af- 
ter it passed to the Habsburgs in 1363. While some originated 
from Italy, they were predominantly of German origin. The 



50 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOMBAY 



persecutions and expulsions which followed the blood libel 
in *Trent in 1475 also affected the Jews of Bolzano. A few be- 
gan to settle in the city again in the first half of the 16 th cen- 
tury. In 1754 Hayyim David Joseph *Azulai found only two 
Jewish families in Bolzano. Jewish settlement again increased 
during the 19 th and early 20 th centuries and the Jews estab- 
lished a small community attached to the Jewish community 
of Merano. Starting in 1933, a number of Jews arrived from 
Germany and Eastern Europe. 

[Daniel Carpi / Federica Francesconi (2 nd ed.)] 

According to the 1938 census of Jews in Italy, there were 938 
Jews in the province of Bolzano. When the Germans occupied 
Italy after the Italian armistice with the Allies on September 8, 
1943, the province, along with those of Trent and Belluno, was 
separated from the Italian Social Republic and included in the 
Zona delle Prealpi (Alpenvorland), under direct German ad- 
ministration. About 38 Jewish residents of the province were 
deported during the period of German occupation. Another 
207 Jews from all over Italy were deported from the transit 
camp of Gries, established in a suburb of Bolzano after the 
closing of Fossoli on August 1, 1944. 

[Susan Zuccotti (2 nd ed.)] 

bibliography: H.Y.D. Azulai, Magal Tov ha-Shalem, 1 (1921), 
12; J.E. Scherer, Die Rechtsverhaeltnisse derjuden in den deutsch-oes- 
terreichischen Laendern (1901); G. Ottani, Un popolo piange (1945); 
G. Canali, II magistrato mercantile di Bolzano. . . (1942). add. bibli- 
ography: C. Villani Cinzia. Ebreifra leggi razziste e deportazioni 
nelle province di Bolzano, Trento e Belluno (1996). 

BOMBAY (today Mumbai), capital of Maharashtra and the 
proverbial "gateway to India." Bombay enters Jewish history 
after the cession of the city to the Portuguese in the middle of 
the 16 th century. Then a small fishing island of no great eco- 
nomic significance, Bombay was leased out around 1554-55 
to the celebrated *Marrano scientist and physician Garcia da 
*Orta, in recognition of his services to the viceroy. Garcia re- 
peatedly refers in his Coloquios (Goa, 1563) to "the land and 
island which the king our lord made me a grant of, paying a 
quit-rent." After the transference of Bombay to English rule 
the Jew Abraham *Navarro expected to receive a high office 
in the Bombay council of the East India Company in recogni- 
tion of his services. This was, however, denied to him because 
he was a Jew. In 1697 Benjamin Franks jumped Captain Kidd's 
"Adventure Galley" in Bombay as a protest against Kidd's acts 
of piracy; his deposition led to Kidd's trial in London. 

The foundation of a permanent Jewish settlement in 
Bombay was laid in the second half of the 18 th century by the 
'''Bene Israel who gradually moved from their villages in the 
Konkan region to Bombay. Their first synagogue in Bombay 
was built (1796) on the initiative of S.E. *Divekar. *Cochin 
Jews strengthened the Bene Israel in their religious revival. 
The next largest wave of immigrants to Bombay consisted of 
Jewish merchants from Syria and Mesopotamia. Prominent 
was Suleiman ibn Ya c qub or Solomon Jacob whose commer- 
cial activities from 1795 to 1833 are documented in the Bombay 



records. The Arabic-speaking Jewish colony in Bombay was 
increased by the influx of other "Arabian Jews" from *Surat, 
who, in consequence of economic changes there, turned their 
eyes to India. 

A turning point in the history of the Jewish settlement 
in Bombay was reached with the arrival in 1833 of the Bagh- 
dad Jewish merchant, industrialist, and philanthropist, David 
*Sassoon (1792-1864) who soon became a leading figure of the 
Jewish community. He and his house had a profound impact 
on Bombay as a whole as well as on all sectors of the Jewish 
community. Many of the educational, cultural, and civic in- 
stitutions, as well as hospitals and synagogues in Bombay owe 
their existence to the munificence of the Sassoon family. 

Unlike the Bene Israel, the Arabic-speaking Jews in 
Bombay did not assimilate the language of their neighbors, 
Marathi, but carried their Judeo-Arabic language and liter- 
ature with them and continued to regard Baghdad as their 
spiritual center. They therefore established their own syna- 
gogues, the Magen David in 1861 in Byculla, and the Knes- 
eth Elijah in 1888 in the Fort quarter of Bombay. A weekly 
Judeo-Arabic periodical, Doresh Tov le-Ammo y which mir- 
rored communal life, appeared from 1855 to 1866. Hebrew 
printing began in Bombay with the arrival of Yemenite Jews 
in the middle of the 19 th century. They took an interest in the 
religious welfare of the Bene Israel, for whom - as well as for 
themselves - they printed various liturgies from 1841 onward, 
some with translations into Marathi, the vernacular of the 
Bene Israel. Apart from a short-lived attempt to print with 
movable type, all this printing was by lithography. In 1882, 
the Press of the Bombay Educational Society was established 
(followed in 1884 by the Anglo-Jewish and Vernacular Press, 
in 1887 by the Hebrew and English Press, and in 1900 by the 
Lebanon Printing Press), which sponsored the publication of 
over 100 Judeo-Arabic books to meet their liturgical and lit- 
erary needs, and also printed books for the Bene Israel. There 
were also a number of Bene-Israel journals published in Bom- 
bay (Bene Israelite, Friend of Israel, Israelite, The Lamp of Ju- 
daism, Satya Prakash). 

The prosperity of Bombay attracted a new wave of Jewish 
immigrants from Cochin, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bukhara, and 
Persia. Among Persian Jews who settled in Bombay, the most 
prominent and remarkable figure was Mulla Ibrahim ^Na- 
than (d. 1868) who, with his brother Musa, both of *Meshed, 
were rewarded by the government for their services during 
the first Afghan War. The political events in Europe and the 
advent of Nazism brought a number of German, Polish, Ro- 
manian, and other European Jews to Bombay, many of whom 
were active as scientists, physicians, industrialists, and mer- 
chants. Communal life in Bombay was stimulated by visits of 

Zionist emissaries. 

[Walter Joseph Fischel] 

Contemporary Period 

After the establishment of the State of Israel and India's Inde- 
pendence the Jewish community of Bombay started dimin- 
ishing due to emigration. In the early 21 st century the Jewish 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



51 



BOMBERG, DANIEL 



population of Bombay (Mumbai) was estimated to be about 
2,700. The city remains the last major center of organized Jew- 
ish life in India. There are eight synagogues in Mumbai - six 
belong to the Bene Israel community and two to Baghdadi 
Jews. Mumbai is also a home to the Indian branches of *ort 
(Organization for Technological Training) and ajdc (^Ameri- 
can Joint Distribution Committee). 

[Paul Gottlieb / Yulia Egorova (2 nd ed.) 

bibliography: Fischel, in paajr, 25 (1956), 39-62; 26 (1957), 
25—39; idem, in: huca, 29 (1958), 331-75; S. Jackson, The Sassoons 
(1968), index; C. Roth, The Sassoon Dynasty (1941), index; D.S. Sas- 
soon, History of the Jews in Baghdad (1949), index; idem, Massa Bavel, 
ed. by M. Benayahu (1955), index; Soares, in: Journal of the Royal Asi- 
atic Society, Bombay Branch, 26 (1921), 195-229; A. Yaari, Ha-Defus 
ha-Ivri be-Arezot ha-Mizrah, 2 (1940), 52-82. contemporary: S. 
Strizower, Exotic Jewish Communities (1962), 48-87; World Jewish 
Congress, Jewish Communities of the World (1963), 40-41; S. Feder- 
bush (ed.), World Jewry Today (1959), 339-40. add. bibliogra- 
phy: J. Roland, The Jewish Communities of India (1998). 

°BOMBERG, DANIEL (d. between 1549 and 1553), one of 
the first and the most prominent Christian printers of Hebrew 
books. Bomberg left his native Antwerp as a young man and 
settled in Venice. Rich and well educated, and even having 
studied Hebrew, he developed a deep interest in books. He 
probably learned the art of printing from his father Cornelius. 
In all, nearly 200 Hebrew books were published (many for the 
first time) at Bombergs printing house in Venice, which he set 
up on the advice of the apostate Felix Pratensis. He published 
editions of the Pentateuch and the Hebrew Bible, both with 
and without commentaries, and was the first to publish the 
rabbinic Bible Mikrabt Gedolot, 4 vols., 1517-18, with Pratensis 
as editor, i.e., the text of the Hebrew Bible with Targum and 
the standard commentaries. In order to produce this work, he 
had to cast great quantities of type and engage experts as edi- 
tors and proofreaders. As a result of the success of his early 
work, Bomberg expanded his operations. He published the 
first complete editions of the two Talmuds (1520-23) with the 
approval of Pope Leo x (only individual tractates of the Baby- 
lonian Talmud having hitherto been published), as well as the 
Tosefta (appended to the 2 nd ed. of Alfasi, 1522). The pagina- 
tion of Bombergs editions of the Talmud (with commentaries) 
has become standard ever since. Similarly, his second edition 
of the rabbinic Bible (1524-25) edited by * Jacob b. Hayyim ibn 
Adonijah, has served as a model for all subsequent editions 
of the Bible. He is said to have invested more than 4,000,000 
ducats in his printing plant. Bomberg spent several years try- 
ing to obtain a permit from the Council of Venice to estab- 
lish a Hebrew publishing house. He also had to secure special 
dispensation for his Jewish typesetters and proofreaders from 
wearing the distinctive Jewish (yellow) hat. In 1515 the Vene- 
tian printer P. Liechtenstein printed, at Bombergs expense, a 
Latin translation by Felix Pratensis of the Psalms. Apparently, 
the first Hebrew book to come off his press was the Penta- 
teuch (Venice, Dec. 1516), though there is some evidence that 
his first work was printed in 1511 (Aresheth 3, 93 ff.). In 1516 



he obtained a privilege to print Hebrew books for the Jews 
and went on printing rabbinic books, midrashic-liturgical 
texts, etc. Among Bombergs printers, editors, and proofread- 
ers whose names are known were: Israel (Cornelius) *Adel- 
kind and his brother and Jacob b. Hayyim ibn Adonijah (all of 
whom were later baptized); David Pizzighettone, Abraham de 
*Balmes, *Kalonymus b. David, and Elijah *Levita (Bahur). It 
seems that Bombergs fortunes declined as a result of compe- 
tition from other publishers. In 1539 he returned to Antwerp, 
though his publishing house continued to operate until 1548. 
His distinctive type became popular, and his successors not 
only lauded his typography but went so far as to print on the 
title pages of their publications "with Bomberg type," or some 
similar reference. The name Bomberg which appears in the 
Plantin Bible published in Antwerp in 1566 almost certainly 
refers to his son, and from him Plantin obtained a manuscript 
of the Syriac New Testament on which he based the Polyglot 
Bible known as Regia (8 vols., 1569-73). 

bibliography: A. Berliner, in: jjlg, 3 (1905), 293-305 (= Ke- 
tavim Nivharim, 2 (1949), 163-75, 287-8; A. Freimann, in: zhb, 10 
(1906), 32-36, 79-88; D.W. Amram, Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy 
(1909), 146-224; I. Mehlman, in: Aresheth, 3 (1961), 93-98; J. Bloch, 
Venetian Printers of Hebrew Books (1932), 5-16; C. Roth, Venice (1930), 
246-54; G.E. Weil, ElieLevita (1963), index; C. Roth, in: rej, 89 (1930), 
204; British Museum, Department of Printed Books, Short-title Cat- 
alogue of Books Printed in Italy... from 1465 to 1600 (1958), 788-9; 
H.M. Adams, Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe, 
1501-1600, in Cambridge Libraries, 2 (1967), 397-8. 

[Abraham Meir Habermann] 

BOMBERG, DAVID (1890-1957), British painter. He was 
born in Birmingham and brought up in Whitechapel, the 
Jewish quarter of London. Apprenticed to a lithographer, he 
attended evening classes and later the Slade School. In 1914 
he became a founder-member of the London Group, and par- 
ticipated in an exhibition "Twentieth Century Art" held at the 
Whitechapel Art Gallery for which he organized an interna- 
tional Jewish section. This was the first collection of modern 
Jewish art to be seen in England. 

In 1923 the English painter, Sir Muirhead Bone, wrote to 
the British Zionist Federation urging them to employ Bomb- 
erg to record pioneering work in Palestine. Bomberg visited 
Palestine, but fell out with the Zionists, refusing to paint what 
he regarded as propaganda pictures. He spent six months at 
Petra, where he developed his taste for sunbaked, desolate 
landscapes. Later he continued his travels and painted in sev- 
eral countries, particularly in Spain. Bomberg then fell into 
poverty and neglect as his paintings fell out of favor, although 
he was an influential and inspiring lecturer at the Borough 
Polytechnic, London, where he taught from 1945 until 1953. 
In 1954 he returned to Spain, with the intention of found- 
ing an artists' colony, but died with the plan still unfulfilled. 
Bombergs early paintings show the influence of Cubism, but 
remain representational; these include some Jewish subjects, 
such as the Jewish Theater (1913), Family Bereavement (c. 1913, 



52 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BONAFED, SOLOMON BEN REUBEN 



commemorating his mother's death), and In the Hold and Mud 
Bath (1913-14), studies of a Jewish communal bath. 

His later work is more emotional, painted in rich, fiery 
colors. Hear, O Israel, painted in Spain in 1955, represents a 
return to Jewish themes of his youth. In 1967 the Tate Gal- 
lery honored his memory with a comprehensive memorial 
exhibition. 

bibliography: W. Lipke, David Bomberg; a Critical Study 

of his Life and Work (1967). add. bibliography: odnb online; 

R. Cork, David Bomberg (1987). 

[Charles Samuel Spencer] 

BOMZE, NAHUM (1906-1954), Yiddish poet. Bomze 
was born in eastern Galicia. He made his literary debut in 
the ^Warsaw Yugent Veker in 1929 and was a member of the 
Lemberg literary group Tsushtayer (1929-31). In the 1930s he 
lived in Warsaw and on the outbreak of wwn he went back 
to Lemberg (Lvov). Then he served with the Russian army 
during World War 11 and after the war tried to settle in Po- 
land again. In 1948 he settled in the United States. He pub- 
lished four collections of poetry: In di Teg fun Vokh (1929); 
Borvese Trit (1936); A Gast in Farnakht (1939); A Khasene in 
Herbst (1949). A selection of his poems with an introduction 
by H. *Leivick, Ayvik Bliyen Vet der Traum was published 
posthumously. 

bibliography: S. Melzer {ed.),AlNaharot (1957), 106,428; 
J. Leftwich, Golden Peacock (1939); lnyl, 1 (1956), 221-2. 

[Shlomo Bickel] 

BONAFED, DAVID BEN REUBEN (1240?-?), rabbi, Tal- 
mud commentator and halakhist. A student of *Nahmanides, 
David wrote novellae to a number of tractates of the Talmud. 
Those of Tractates Sanhedrin and Pesahim were scattered in 
the novellae of R. *Nissim ben Gerondi to those two tractates, 
and it appears that R. Nissim bases his decisions on those of 
Bonafed. His novellae on those two tractates have now been 
published separately: those on Sanhedrin by Yaakov Halevi 
Lifschitz (1968), and those on Pesahim by Abraham Shoshana 
(1978), on the basis of the only extant manuscript which is in 
the Casanatense Library in Rome. 

The novellae on Sanhedrin were apparently written dur- 
ing the life time of Nahmanides, between 1264 and 1270, since 
Bonafed always refers to him as being still alive and he makes 
extensive use of his works, as well as mentioning many details 
which he had heard from Nahmanides himself. In addition, 
however, he employs new methods in his treatment of the sub- 
jects he deals with by examining all the various interpretations 
of his predecessors, before arriving at an independent halakhic 
decision. Like his master, he tries to establish the correct text 
upon which he bases his commentary. 

bibliography: Michael, Or, 10, 703; Y.N. Epstein, HaKedem, 
1 (1907-8), 131; idem, Tarbiz, 4 (1933) 24; Lifschitz, Mavo le-Hidushei 
R. David al Sanhedrin (1968), 32-47; A. Shoshana, Mavo le-Hidushei 
R. David al Pesahim (1978), 33-39. 

[Yehoshua Horowitz] 



BONAFED, SOLOMON BEN REUBEN (end of the 14 th - 
mid-i5 th century), Spanish poet and thinker; the last im- 
portant poet of Sefarad. Solomon ben Reuben Bonafed was 
born between 1370 and 1380, and resided in different places 
in the Kingdom of Aragon in todays provinces of Lleida and 
Saragossa. He was linked to the members of the poetry cir- 
cle headed by Solomon ben Meshullam de Piera (who was 
considerably older) and Vidal ben Benvenist ibn Lavi de la 
Cavalleria. He was present at the Disputation of Tortosa and 
was distressed by the numerous conversions, but he tried not 
to lose ties to the *New Christians. He was already quite old 
in 1445, when he wrote poems and letters from Belchite after 
having been forced to leave Saragossa due to disputes with 
community leaders. Only a relatively small part of his diwan, 
including poems and literary epistles, has been published; the 
rest is still in manuscript. We know his poetry from the man- 
uscripts and partial editions by A. Kaminka in Mi-Mizrah u- 
mi-Maarav (1, 2 (1895), 107-27, and 1926-28), Y. Patay (1926), 
and H. Schirmann (1946). The Hebrew text of the first part 
of the diwan has been edited and studied by A. Bejarano (Ph. 
D. dissertation, 1989). The largest and most important man- 
uscript of the diwan is ms. 1984 (Mich. 155) of the Neubauer 
Cat. at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, but other minor manu- 
scripts have also been preserved. 

As was usual in his time, most of Bonafed s literary activ- 
ity was in the form of poetic correspondence with other Jewish 
intellectuals, often including prose as well as verse sections, 
though the copyists of his manuscripts did not always under- 
stand this circumstance. Both poetry and prose are written in 
biblical Hebrew, and in the prose sections (both rhymed and 
unrhymed) biblical quotations are particularly numerous. 

For Bonafed, Hebrew poetry had a very old tradition 
with roots in the ancient poets of the Bible and in the classical 
poets of Andalusia. He felt that his vocation was to continue 
the Hebrew traditions of Andalusian poetry. He admired es- 
pecially *Judah Halevi, and identified in many aspects with 
Solomon ibn *Gabirol, who suffered similar rejection by the 
Sarogossa community. He also had deep respect for the great 
poets of his time, Solomon de Piera, Vidal ben Benvenist ibn 
Lavi, and Vidal Benveniste. He saw himself as the last Hebrew 
poet of Sefarad, and was convinced that Hebrew poetry would 
disappear with him. 

He cultivated most of the classical genres - panegyrics, 
dirges, wedding poems, didactic compositions, etc. - imitat- 
ing Arabic or Hebrew models; his love poems and his satiri- 
cal verse are a good example of the merging of such elements 
with others employed in the Romance (Catalan) lyric of the 
epoch. He also wrote a few liturgical poems. Among his piyyu- 
tim are recorded Shekhunah bi-Neshamah, a reshut for Pass- 
over, included in the Montpellier prayer book. Bonafed is also 
the author of some of the last muwassahat of clear Andalusian 
tradition written in the Iberian Peninsula, even if they have a 
rather modified structure. Novelties of the incipient Renais- 
sance, like an Italian influence, are not yet clear in his work. 
As was usual in Christian Spain, where the bourgeoisie was 



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BONAFOS, MENAHEM B. ABRAHAM 



becoming more and more important, Bonafeds poetry was 
realistic and full of life. 

Although Bonafed mocked the excessively severe rab- 
binical rulings and many superstitious customs prevalent in 
contemporary circles, he remained strictly religious and zeal- 
ous for the Jewish faith. He was in *Tortosa during the dis- 
putation in 1413-14, and wrote there several poems dedicated 
to friends who had gathered with him in that city. Bonafed's 
poems are an invaluable historical source for this event, and 
illuminate the psychological stresses of the period which re- 
sulted in masses of Jews adopting Christianity. An outstand- 
ing defection was that of Vidal de la * Cavalleria, who took a 
leading part in the disputation. Immediately after his conver- 
sion he was appointed to an important official post. Bonafed 
expressed his distress at VidaPs apostasy: "A precious sun has 
set in our West - why has it not risen on our horizon?" Many 
of those who had left Judaism were his former friends, "Schol- 
ars who were precious beyond words, who girded themselves 
with valor. .. How, now that they are gone, shall I erase those 
pleasant names from my doorposts?" 

The numerous conversions of those years left a deep 
mark on the poetry of Bonafed. 

His vision was pessimistic: the circle of Saragossa, which 
had had brought about a revival of Hebrew poetry after the 
disappearance of the great masters of the past, had been irre- 
trievably shattered with the conversion of the two Ibn Lavis 
(Vidal and Bonafos) and their old tutor, De Piera. Bonafed 
saw these conversions as representing a betrayal of Hebrew 
language, culture, and poetry, but even after their conversion 
these poets of the circle of Saragossa, and especially Solomon 
ben Meshullam de Piera and Vidal Ibn Lavi remained for him 
the authors of his time whom he admired the most. He tried 
to re-establish the old friendship and to continue his poetical 
correspondence in Hebrew, thinking that for these Conversos, 
Hebrew poetry might be the strongest link with their old faith. 
When several years later, in 1445, Bonafed suffered serious per- 
sonal problems with members of the Jewish community, he 
wrote to Vidal Ibn Lavi, who for decades had gone under the 
Christian name of Don Gonzalo de la Cavalleria. 

Bonafed addressed a satirical polemic in rhyming prose 
and verse to the apostate Astruc *Rimoch (Francesch de Sant 
Jordi), who was attempting to persuade a young acquain- 
tance to follow his example (edited with commentary by E 
Talmage, 1979, 341). In it Bonafed raised the anomalies in 
Christian doctrine, and deduced evidence of their irrational- 
ity and untenability. Rimochs original letter and Bonafeds 
reply were published by Isaac Akrish as an appendix to the 
well-known epistle of Profiat *Duran, Al Tehi ka-Avoteikha 
(Constantinople, 1577). 

Bonafed wrote many satirical verses. Perhaps because of 
his satirical bent, Bonafed had many enemies with whom he 
settled his account in his poems and biting epigrams, includ- 
ing other poets and community leaders, and he also criticized 
the social order and public affairs. A direct object of his fury 
was the Sicilian Rabbi Yeshua, whom he considered mainly 



responsible for his forced exit from Saragossa. Bonafeds verses 
contain accusations of irregularities in community adminis- 
tration, dishonesty, theft, disregard of the rights of community 
members, fraudulent practices in commerce and accounts, ac- 
ceptance of bribes, usury, etc. 

As a Jewish intellectual, Bonafed was aware of the ten- 
sions in his generation regarding the relationship between 
faith and reason, theory and practice, and attributed the con- 
fusion to a mistaken interpretation of Maimonides. Leaving 
aside his great respect for the Master, Bonafed was surely not 
an enthusiastic Aristotelian or a rationalist. Although Chris- 
tian theology met with his total rejection, he had great respect 
for the scientific and philosophical knowledge of his Christian 
neighbors. Among his unpublished letters and poems there 
is a long discussion in Hebrew with a young philosopher, a 
student of Isaac Arondi of Huesca, in which Bonafed main- 
tained that the logic taught in his time by Christian masters 
was superior to the logic of Arabic-Jewish tradition. He was 
familiar with the subject, as he had studied logic, in Latin, with 
a Christian teacher. Bonafed emphasized that the Christian 
study of Aristotelian logic, based on Boethius' translation, was 
more faithful to Aristotle than the accepted Jewish tradition 
that followed Averroes > interpretation. He distanced himself 
in this way from the most renowned Jewish logicians, such as 
Maimonides and or Gersonides. His critical attitude in this 
field was somewhat new in medieval Jewish thought, a proof 
of Bonafeds independence of mind and strong personality. 
However, in spite of his unequivocal dissent in the field of 
logic, Bonafed should in no way be included among the anti- 
Maimonidean thinkers of the century. 

bibliography: Zunz, Poesie, 518; Steinschneider, in: hb, 14 
(1874), 95-97; Steinschneider, Cat Bod, no. 6904; Neubauer, Cat, 916, 
ii, 1984A; A.Z. Schwarz, Die hebraeischen Handschriften in der Nation- 
albibliothek in Wien (1925), no. 120, 2; Baer, Spain, index; Schirmann, 
Sefarad, 2 (1961), 620-43, 699-700. add. bibliography: A. Ka- 
minka, in: Ha-Zofeh le-Hokhmat Yisrael, 10 (1926), 288-95; 12 ( 1 9 2 ^) 
33-42; J. Patai, in Ha-Zofeh le-Hokhmat Yisrael, 10 (1926), 220-23. H.J. 
Schirmann, in: Kovez al-Yad, 4 (1946), 8-64. A.M. Bejarano, "Selomoh 
Bonafed, poema y polemista hebreo (siglo xiv-xv)" Diss. 1989, in: An- 
uari de Filologia, 14, E (1991), 87-101; Gross, in: The Frank Talmage 
Memorial Volume, 1 (Heb. sect., 1993), 35-61; Gutwirth, in: Sefarad, 45 
(1985), 23-53; A. Saenz-Badillos, in: C. Carrete et al. (eds.), Encuentros 
& Desencuentros. Spanish-Jewish Cultural Interaction Throughout His- 
tory (2000), 343-80; A. Saenz-Badillos and Prats, in: Revista espanola 
de Filosofia Medieval. Miscellanea Mediaevalia en honor de Joaquin 
Lomba Fuentes, 10 (2003), 15-27; A. Saenz-Badillos and J. Targarona, 
in: Te'udah 19 (2003), 21^-46*; Talmage, in: I. Twersky (ed.), Studies 
in Mediaeval Jewish History and Literature (1979), 337ff-; Vardi, in: 
Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 14 (1993), 169-96. 

[Bernard Suler / Angel Saenz-Badillos (2 nd ed.)] 

BONAFOS, MENAHEM B. ABRAHAM (also called 
Bonafoux Abraham of Perpignan; late i4 th -early 15 th cen- 
tury), philosophical author. Bonafos, who lived in France, is 
the author of a dictionary entitled Sefer ha-Gedarim ("Book of 
Definitions"), also called Mikhlal Yofi ("Perfection of Beauty"), 



54 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BONAN 



containing precise definitions of technical terms appearing in 
the Hebrew philosophical and scientific literature, particularly 
in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. The entries under each 
letter are divided into six sections according to the following 
classification: ethics and politics, logic, metaphysics, physics, 
mathematics and astronomy, and medicine. In 1567 the book 
was first published, with some notes, by Isaac b. Moses ibn 
Arollo in Salonika, and again in Berlin, 1798, with a commen- 
tary and additions by Isaac Satanow. 

bibliography: Renan, Rabbins, 740; Gross, Gal Jud, 476; 
rej, 5 (1882), 254; G.B. de'Rossi, Dizionario storico degli autori arabi 
(Parma, 1807), 75; Wolf, Bibliotheca, 1 (1715), 763; Steinschneider, Cat 
Bod, 1719, no. 6341, 1983, no. 6546; A.Z. Schwarz, Die hebraeischen 
Handschriften in der National-bibliothek in Wien (1925), no 150. 

BONAFOUX, DANIEL BEN ISRAEL (c. 1645-after 1710), 
Shabbatean prophet. Bonafoux was born in Salonika, and 
settled in Smyrna and served there as a hazzan in the Pinto 
synagogue. He was a follower of Shabbetai Zevi and even after 
his apostasy Bonafoux continued to be a leading believer in 
him. The Shabbateans accepted Bonafoux as a visionary and 
a prophet. When Abraham Miguel ^Cardoso came to Smyrna 
in 1674, Bonafoux, known as Hakham Daniel in documents, 
was at the head of the group of Cardosos followers. In the 
1680s Bonafoux returned to Salonika for a few years, and his 
opponents claimed that he had joined the *Doenmeh there, 
but this is doubtful. About 1695 when he returned to Smyrna 
he caused great confusion by his visionary tricks. He would 
read questions addressed to him in sealed letters and demon- 
strate various phenomena of light, etc. Many came to him for 
answers to their questions, among them critics from abroad 
who wanted to examine him and to get an idea of his Shab- 
batean belief. The latter included Abraham *Rovigo, whose 
letter about his visit to Bonafoux in 1704 is extant (Ms., Jeru- 
salem, 80, 1466, fol. 196). Bonafoux was a close friend of Eli- 
jah ha-Kohen ha-Itamari, the principal preacher of the town, 
who referred to Bonafoux in "Yeled" his story of a sooth- 
sayer (Midrash Talpiyyot (i860), 207). In 1702 Bonafoux was 
expelled on the request of the leaders of the community and 
he lived for a while in a village near Smyrna. In a letter from 
the Dutch consul in Smyrna dated 1703, Bonafoux s "oracles" 
are described in detail. After 1707 he went to Egypt and re- 
turned to Smyrna in 1710 with an imaginary letter from the 
Lost Ten Tribes in praise of Shabbetai Zevi, who would reveal 
himself anew. The letter is found in manuscript (Ben-Zvi In- 
stitute, Jerusalem, no. 2263). Until his death, Bonafoux main- 
tained contact with Cardoso who claimed in his letters that 
the "*Maggid" who talked through the mouth of Bonafoux 
was the soul of the kabbalist David Habillo. 

bibliography: J. Emden, Torat ha-Kenabt (1870), 55; J.C. 
Basnage de Beauval, History of the Jews (London, 1708), 758f.; A. Fre- 
imann (ed.), Inyanei Shabbetai Zevi (1912), 10; Sefunot, 3-4 (i960), 
index s.v. Bonafoux and Daniel Israel; G. Scholem, in: Zion Meassef 
3 (1929), 176-8. 

[Gershom Scholem] 



°BONALD, LOUIS GABRIEL AMBROISE, VICOMTE 

DE (1754-1840), French political theorist. De Bonald fled 
France in 1791 during the Revolution. He later became a lead- 
ing exponent of the Catholic and royalist political school and 
opposed all liberal tendencies. A logical outcome of his tra- 
ditionalist views was to regard the Jews as a "deicide nation* 
and to combat their emancipation. In the Mercure de France 
(23 (1806), 249-67), which he directed with ^Chateaubriand 
from 1806, de Bonald accused the Jews of aspiring to world 
domination. De Bonald s works, in particular the Theorie du 
pouvoir, formed the ideological arsenal from which the French 
clerical movement was later to forge its weapons of intoler- 
ance and antisemitism. 

bibliography: L. Poliakov, Histoire de Vantisemitisme, 3 
(1968), index. 

BONAN, family of Tunisian rabbis, some of whose mem- 
bers settled in *Tiberias and *Safed. mas'ud bonan (born 
c. 1705), the first known member of the family, was one of the 
first scholars of the renewed settlement in Tiberias. In 1748 he 
was sent as an emissary to Western Europe, and he spent four 
years in Italy, Holland, England, and Germany. While in Ham- 
burg, he supported Jonathan *Eybeschuetz in his controversy 
with Jacob *Emden. In 1751 he was in London, where he wrote 
an approbation to Mikdash Melekh by Shalom Buzaglo. From 
1752 he made Safed his permanent home. Following the earth- 
quake of 1759, he signed, as chief rabbi of Safed, the letters of 
the emissaries who traveled to different countries to solicit aid 
for the rehabilitation of the community. During the wars of Ali 
Bey, *Mamluk ruler of Egypt in 1773, who plundered the Jews, 
he proceeded to Europe as an emissary, though old and in ill 
health. The main center of Mas'ud s activity was Leghorn, but 
he also visited France, Austria, and England. He apparently re- 
turned to Safed after 1778. hayyim mordecai, son of Mas'ud, 
was sent, together with Israel Benveniste, to Western Europe 
in 1767 on behalf of the Safed community, and again in 1774 
to Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan, isaac bonan (died c. 1810) was 
an outstanding scholar of Tunis. Of his books the following 
have been published: Oholei Yizhak (Leghorn, 1821), talmu- 
dic no veil ae, together with notes on various halakhic codes. 
Also included are the halakhic rulings of Isaiah di Trani the 
Elder on the tractates Rosh Ha-Shanah, Ta'anit, and Hagigah; 
Ohel Yesharim (Leghorn, 1821), a talmudic methodology, ar- 
ranged alphabetically (1846); Berit Yizhak on the Mekhilta, 
with its commentaries, Zayit Raanan and Shevut Yehudah y 
of Judah Najar of Tunis, together with a commentary on the 
Mishnah of Berakhot and the commentary of the tosafists on 
the Pentateuch. His son david (d. 1850) studied under Isaac 
Tayib and was a rabbi of the Leghorn community in Tunis. 
Davids books, published by his son Isaac, were Dei Hashev 
(1857), responsa compiled together with Judah ha-Levi of 
Gibraltar, to refute Bekhor Isaac Navarro's strictures on the 
above-mentioned Oholei Yizhak, and his own responsa un- 
der the different title Nishal David; Moed David on the Avo- 
datha-Kodesh of Solomon b. Abraham Adret (Part 1, on Festi- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



55 



BONASTRUC, ISAAC 



vals, 1887); Mahaneh David (1889), researches on Talmud and 
halakhah. Included are novellae by Isaiah di Trani the Elder 
and of the son of Nahmanides on tractate Bezah. David also 
prepared his fathers books for publication and wrote notes 
on Berit Yizhak. 

bibliography: Yaari, Sheluhei, 460-1, 507-8; M. Benayahu, 
Rabbi H.Y.D. Azulai (Heb., 1959), 28, 553; Simonsohn, in: Sefunot, 6 
(1962), 335-6, 346-54; Emmanuel, ibid., 407, 409, 420; D. Cazes, Notes 
bibliographiques sur la litterature juive-tunisienne (1893), 36-59. 

BONASTRUC, ISAAC (c. 1400), scholar. Bonastruc was 
among a group of scholars who settled in * Algiers after their 
expulsion from Majorca in 1391. It seems that he was associ- 
ated with R. Simeon b. Zemah *Duran and R. *Isaac b. Sheshet 
Perfet in the preparation of the twelve takkanot pertaining 
to marital status (1394) which remained in force for several 
hundred years (cf. Simeon b. Zemah Duran, Tashbez> vol. 2 
(Amsterdam, 1742), no. 292). Bonastruc had a belligerent, ar- 
gumentative personality. He was compelled to leave Algiers 
after 1404, as a result of his slanderous remarks about Saul ha- 
Kohen *Astruc, the leader of the Algiers community. After the 
latter s death, Bonastruc settled in *Constantine, where again 
he was the cause of stormy controversies within the Jewish 
community because of his opposition to its leaders. He was 
appeased when he received a grant from the community on 
the recommendation of Isaac b. Sheshet: at the same time 
Simeon b. Zemah asked the local dayyan, Joseph b. David, 
not to oppose him. 

bibliography: I. Epstein, The Responsa of Rabbi Simon b. 
Zemah Duran (1968 2 ), 17-19, 26, 66, 84; A.M. Hershman, Rabbi Isaac 
ben Sheshet Perfet and His Times (1943), index. 

[Abraham David] 

BONAVENTURA, ENZO JOSEPH (1891-1948), psycholo- 
gist. Born in Pisa, Bonaventura was brought to Florence at an 
early age. Enzo was brought up without any notion of Judaism, 
but falling under the influence of S.H. Margulies, rabbi of Flor- 
ence, had himself circumcised when he returned from World 
War 1. In 1922 he was appointed professor of psychology at the 
University of Florence, where he founded and directed the 
psychological laboratory. Leader of the Zionist Society of Flor- 
ence, he settled in Palestine in 1938 and was appointed profes- 
sor of psychology at the Hebrew University. He was killed in 
April 1948 during an Arab attack on a convoy on the way to 
the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. Bonaventuras views 
of psychology united the classical and the modern schools of 
thought, and this was apparent in his scientific work, which 
combined the pursuit of detail within a broad philosophical 
framework. Bonaventura employed the experimental method 
in his research into the problems of time, perception, move- 
ment, attention, volition, and conation; he also investigated 
the problems of mental development, especially in retarded 
children. His most important works in Italian are Leducazione 
della volontd (1927), II problema psicologico del tempo (1929), 
Psicologia delletd evolutiva (1930), and La psicoanalisi (1938). 



His important Hebrew works are La-Psychology ah shel Gil ha- 
Neurim ve-ha-Hitbaggerut ("Psychology of Youth and Ado- 
lescence" 1943) and Horabt le-Morim u-le-Mehannekhim le- 
Hadrakhat ha-Noar bi-Vehirat ha-Mikzoa ("Instructions to 
Teachers and Educators in Helping Young People Choose a 

Profession," 1947). 

[Haim Ormian] 

Bonaventuras father, arnaldo (1862-1957), was a noted mu- 
sicologist. He studied law and literature at Pisa but soon de- 
voted himself to musicology. He became librarian at the music 
section of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale at Florence, and 
afterward director and librarian at the Instituto Luigi Cheru- 
bini in the same town where he also taught music history and 
aesthetics. Bonaventuras many works include Manuale di sto- 
ria della musica (1898) and Storia e letteratura del pianoforte 
(1918), both of which were reprinted in 13 editions, as well as 
critical biographies of Paganini, Verdi, Pasquini, Puccini, Boc- 
cherini, and Rossini. He also edited the compositions of Peri, 
Frescobaldi, Strozzi, and Caccini. 

bibliography: Grove, Diet; Riemann-Gurlitt; mgg; Baker, 
Biog Diet; Kressel, Leksikon, 1 (1965), 187-8. add. bibliogra- 
phy: S. Gori Savellini, Enzo Bonaventura (1891-1948); una singolare 
vicenda culturale dalla psicologia sperimentale alia psicoanalisi e alia 

psicologia applicata (1990). 

[Claude Abravanel] 

BONAVOGLIA, MOSES DE' MEDICI (d. 1446), rabbi 
and physician in Sicily. A protege of the House of Aragon, he 
studied medicine in Padua and on his return in 1420 was ap- 
pointed chief judge (* dienchelele) of the Sicilian Jews. The 
office, usually held by persons too close to the court, was un- 
popular among Sicilian Jewry. Hence Bonavoglia was twice 
removed from this post but was recalled each time. In 1431 
he obtained from the king the abrogation of some anti- 
Jewish legislation. Bonavoglia was the personal physician 
of Alfonso v and in 1442 followed him when he conquered 
Naples. 

bibliography: B. and G. Lagumina (eds.), Codice diplo- 

matico dei Giudei di Sicilia, 1 (1884), 3o8f., 361-8; Milano, Italia, 512; 

Roth, Italy, 2381!., 249. 

[Attilio Milano] 

BONCIU, H. (originally Bercu Haimovici; 1893-1950), Ro- 
manian poet and novelist. His poems on domestic themes and 
the torments of the soul appeared in collections such as Lada 
cu naluci ("Box of Illusions," 1932). Two others were Brom 
(!939)> poems about the sea, and Requiem (1945). His two nov- 
els, Bagaj... ("Luggage..." 1934) and Pensiunea doamnei Pip- 
ersberg ("Lady Pipersberg's Pension," 1936), were perceived by 
the literary critics as modern, expressionistic portrayals of the 
cruel and erotic apects of life. Bonciu also published transla- 
tions of German and Austrian poetry. 

BONDAVIN, BONJUDAS (Bonjusas, or Judah ben David; 

c. 1350-c. 1420), rabbi and physician. Bondavin practiced 



56 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BONDI, SIR HERMANN 



medicine in Marseilles between 1381 and 1389 as physician to 
Queen Marie of Provence, and in 1390 settled in Alghero, in 
Sardinia. Also a talmudic scholar, Bondavin later became rabbi 
of Cagliari. As such, he enjoyed the favor of the Aragonese 
authorities. When King Martin 11 of Aragon visited Sardinia 
in 1409, Bondavin attended his court, and the king extended 
his jurisdiction as rabbi to the whole of Sardinia. Bondavins 
learning is demonstrated in his correspondence with Isaac b. 
Shesbet of Saragossa, centering on a picturesque episode at 
the royal court. 

bibliography: Bloch, in: rej, 8 (1884), 280-3; Roth, Italy, 
265; Milano, Italia, 182. 

[Attilio Milano] 

BONDI (Bondy, Bonte, Ponidi, H313 ,H3K3), family name, a 
translation of the Hebrew "Yom Tov" (in Romance languages 
bon - "good", di - "day"). A Bondia family was known in Ara- 
gon in the 13 th century. In 1573 an Abraham Bondi lived in Fer- 
rara. Adam Raphael b. Abraham Jacob Bondi and Hananiah 
Mazzal Tovb. Isaac Hayyim Bondi were rabbis and physicians 
in Leghorn in the second half of the 18 th century, when the 
family was also represented in Rome. In about 1600 the fam- 
ily appears in Prague; the first known member was Yom Tov 
b. Abraham Bondi; subsequently Eliezer, Mordecai, Meshul- 
lam (d. 1676), and his son Solomon Zalman Bondi (d. 1732) 
are mentioned as communal functionaries and scholars. Abra- 
ham b. Yom-Tov Bondi (d. 1786) was the author of ZeraAvra- 
ham on the Even ha-Ezer, which his son Nehemiah Feivel 
(1762-1831) published in Prague in 1808 with his own addi- 
tions. Nehemiah published his own Torat Nehemyah on the 
Talmud tractate Bava Mezia. Elijah b. Selig Bondi (1777-1860) 
was a rabbi and preacher in Prague. Although he was strictly 
conservative, the influence of the *Haskalah is discernible in 
his sermons (Sefer ha-Shearim (1832) and Tiferet ha-Adam 
(1856), both published in Prague). He also published Solomon 
*Lurias Yam shel Shelomo on tractate Gittin (1812). Simeon 
b. Isaac Bondi (c. 1710-1775) moved to Dresden in 1745 and 
became *Court Jew of the elector of Saxony and head of the 
Dresden community. Samuel Bondy (1794-1877) was among 
the founders of the Orthodox congregation in Mainz; his son 
Jonah (1816-1896) was rabbi there. Members of the family 
went to the U.S. Among them were August *Bondi and Jo- 
nas *Bondi. 

bibliography: R.J. Aumann, The Family Bondi (1966; in- 
cludes genealogies and bibliography); Jakobowits, in: mgwj, j6 
(1932), 511-9. 

[Meir Lamed] 

BONDI, ARON (1906-1997), Israeli agricultural nutrition- 
ist and biochemist, born and educated in Vienna. He studied 
chemistry and physics, earning his Ph.D. under E Feigel in 
chemistry (1929). He completed postdoctoral studies in or- 
ganic chemistry under D.E. Bergman in Berlin (1929-32) and 
conducted research in the inorganic chemistry laboratory of 
Feigel in Vienna (1932-34). At the invitation of Chaim *Ar- 



losorofF, he joined the Agricultural Research Station, Rehovot 
(!934)- Bondi established animal nutrition studies in Erez 
Israel. From 1946 until 1974 he taught animal nutrition at the 
Faculty of Agriculture and headed the department of ani- 
mal nutrition from 1940 to 1959. Bondi joined the faculty of 
the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (1949), becoming profes- 
sor of animal nutrition and biochemistry (1961) and headed 
the department of animal nutrition (1958-74). In 1984 he was 
awarded the Israel Prize for agriculture. Bondis publications 
encompass 67 years (1929-96), starting with the study of io- 
dine reactivity in organic solvents and ending with the impor- 
tance of amino acids in layer chicken nutrition. Beside his re- 
search in analytical chemistry, phosphorus, copper, iron, and 
racemization reactions, his studies comprise many aspects of 
agricultural biochemistry, mainly animal nutrition. The stud- 
ies encompass digestibility of cattle fodder, feeding surveys of 
milk cattle, rumen reactions, feed digestibility and absorption, 
vitamin availability for farm animals and biological activities, 
antioxidant activities, toxic agents for the farm animals, pro- 
teolytic enzymes (in vivo and in vitro studies) and their in- 
hibitors, insect biochemistry, legume saponins, and protein 
metabolism in farm animals. His Hebrew textbook on animal 
nutrition (1982) was also published in Spanish. 

[YosefDror (2 nd ed.)] 

BONDI (Bondy), AUGUST (1833-1907), pioneer abolitionist, 
early Jewish settler in Kansas, and supporter of John Browns 
military activities. Born in Vienna, Bondi was an adventurer 
for much of his life. He served in the Vienna Academic Legion 
at the age of fifteen, and, after the failure of the 1848 revolution, 
was taken to the U.S. by his parents. He tried to enlist in the 
Lopez-Crittenden expedition to Cuba and in the Perry mis- 
sion to Japan to escape the monotony that he experienced as 
a store clerk, the usual experience of a young European Jewish 
immigrant at that time. With Jacob Benjamin, he established a 
trading post in Kansas and joined the John Brown abolitionist 
forces in 1855. His reminiscences and manuscript letters report 
in colorful detail on the Kansas border warfare and on his later 
service as a soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War. 
In both cases, he fought out of the conviction that slavery was 
a moral evil. In 1866 he settled in Salina, Kansas, where he es- 
tablished himself as an attorney and businessman, and took 
an active role in civic life. Bondis reminiscences, published in 
Galesburg, Illinois, as Autobiography of August Bondi (1910), is 
a fascinating record of an unusual immigrant s life. 

bibliography: G. Kisch, In Search of Freedom (1949), in- 
dex. 

[Bertram Wallace Korn] 

BONDI, SIR HERMANN (1919- ), British mathematician 
and cosmologist, born in Vienna, where he lived and stud- 
ied under the shadow of fascism. He moved to England in 
1937 and studied in Cambridge where he held academic posts 
(1945-1954). His studies were disrupted by World War 11, when 
he was interned and sent to Canada as an alien subject. He 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



57 



BONDI, JONAS 



was allowed to return to England in 1941, joined Trinity col- 
lege as a research fellow and received his M.A. in 1942. Dur- 
ing that year he joined the Admiralty Signal Establishment to 
undertake secret research on radar. There he met the astron- 
omer Fred Hoyle, and thus began his interest in cosmology. 
After the war he taught mathematics in Cambridge, and in 
1954, Bondi was appointed professor of mathematics at Kings 
College, London. He served as master of Churchill College, 
Cambridge, from 1983 to 1990. He was granted leave of ab- 
sence in 1967 from King's College, to become director-general 
of the European Space Research Organization (1967-71), and 
in 1977-80) was chief scientist to the Ministry of Defense. 
From 1980 to 1984, he was the chairman of the Natural Envi- 
ronment Reseach Council. In 1959 he was elected a Fellow of 
the Royal Society. Bondi is best known as one of the origina- 
tors of the steady-state theory of the universe. Bondi s writ- 
ings include numerous papers on stellar constitution, inter- 
stellar medium, geophysics, cosmology, and general relativity. 
In collaboration with Thomas Gold he produced in 1948 the 
first paper describing the steady-state theory of the expand- 
ing universe, with its concomitant process of the continual 
creation of matter. His books include Cosmology (1962 2 ) and 
The Universe at Large (1961). Bondi took a great interest in 
the role of mathematics in secondary school education and 
in the academic administration of science in the University 
of London. 

[Barry Spain] 

BONDI, JONAS (1804-1874), editor, from i860 until his 
death, of The Hebrew Leader ", a Jewish periodical in New York 
City. Bondi was born in Dresden and educated in Prague. Af- 
ter a business career which ended in failure, he decided to 
emigrate to America, bringing with him his wife and four 
daughters. Nathan *Adler, who had been one of his teach- 
ers in Germany and who was at the time the chief rabbi of 
Great Britain, gave him a recommendation on the basis of his 
Jewish knowledge. This testimonial brought him to the notice 
of the officers of Anshe Chesed Congregation of New York 
City in June 1858, shortly after his arrival in the city. Bon- 
di's help in solving some halakhic problems, related to the 
care of the congregational cemetery, resulted in his appoint- 
ment as preacher of the congregation, but he served in that 
capacity for only a year. He then established his journal, 
which was published both in German and in English. His wife 
conducted a private school for girls. Bondi was a member of 
the conservative-historical school and a moderate in theol- 
ogy and practice, who believed that decorum, dignity, and 
intelligibility were essential if Jewish survival were to be 
assured, and who balked at the radical changes advocated 
by the Liberal and Reform leaders and editors. One of 
Bondi's daughters, Selma, became the second wife of R. 
Isaac Mayer *Wise two years after her fathers death. The fine 
halakhic reference library which Bondi had assembled was 
given to the ^Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati by I.M. 
Wise. 



bibliography: M. Davis, Emergence of Conservative Juda- 
ism (1963), 3321-3; H. Grinstein, Rise of the Jewish Community of New 
York (1945), index, s.v. Bondy, Jonah; G. Kisch, In Search of Freedom 
(1949), 89-90,302-3. 

[Bertram Wallace Korn] 

BONDS, STATE OF ISRAEL. State of Israel Bonds refers 
both to securities issued by the government of Israel and to 
the commonly-used name of the company that is the exclu- 
sive underwriter for Israel bonds in the United States. The 
formal name of the company is the Development Corpora- 
tion for Israel (dci). 

The idea of floating an overseas bond issue was con- 
ceived by Prime Minister David *Ben-Gurion in 1950 and 
was endorsed by Finance Minister Eliezer *Kaplan and Labor 
Minister Golda *Meir. Israel was in desperate need of an in- 
fusion of financial resources, as the new nation was mired in 
a severe economic crisis precipitated by the 15 -month War of 
Independence. In the aftermath of the war, a nation needed 
to be built. Every sector had to be developed, strengthened, 
or modernized. 

Compounding the crisis was the arrival of hundreds of 
thousands of new immigrants. With no more impediments to 
immigration, the Jews of Europe, including Holocaust survi- 
vors and internees from * displaced persons camps, immedi- 
ately set sail for Israel. Moreover, thousands of Jews from the 
Middle East, either expelled or rescued from their countries of 
origin, also poured into Israel. Due to the chronic lack of ab- 
sorption funds, Israel was forced to house the ongoing wave of 
immigrants in primitive shelters called mdabarot - in essence, 
refugee camps. Food was scarce and severely rationed. 

In September 1950, Ben-Gurion convened an urgent 
meeting of American Jewish leaders at Jerusalem's King David 
Hotel to discuss the viability of issuing Israel bonds. Among 
the early advocates of Israel bonds were former secretary trea- 
surer Henry *Morgenthau, Jr., Rudolf G. *Sonnenborn, Sam 
*Rothberg, Julian Venezky, and Henry *Montor. 

The following spring, Ben-Gurion traveled to the United 
States to personally launch the sale of Israel bonds, beginning 
with a mass rally at New York's Madison Square Garden. Ben- 
Gurion subsequently traveled to other cities throughout the 
U.S. to encourage investment in Israel bonds. Although Ben- 
Gurion was hopeful that initial sales would reach $25 million, 
first year purchases were more than double his projections, 
topping $52 million. 

Development funds generated through the sale of Israel 
bonds were quickly put to work. Towns were built for new 
immigrants. The National Water Carrier irrigated nearly half 
a million acres, allowing Israel to become agriculturally self- 
sufficient. The Dead Sea Works became Israel's first major 
industrial undertaking. Power plants helped alleviate Israel's 
lack of energy resources. New ports were built to receive vital 
imports and increase Israel's export potential. Transporta- 
tion networks were constructed and expanded throughout 
the country. 



58 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BONDY, BOHUMIL 




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Specimen certificate of the first Israel Bond issue. 

As Israels economy continued to grow, so too did the 
Bonds organization, with the sale of Israel bonds becoming 
global in scope. In addition to the United States, Israel Bonds 
offices opened in Canada, Europe, and Latin America. 

Annual sales reached new levels, passing $200 million in 
1967, $500 million in 1973, and eventually, more than $1 billion 
in 1991. Although these milestones were reached during times 
of crisis - the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War and the first 
Gulf War - in the 1990s and into the 21 st century, yearly Israel 
bond sales were consistently at or above $1 billion. 

Furthermore, as sales expanded, so too did the base of 
support. Although the majority of purchases continued to 
come from the Diaspora community, non- Jewish supporters 
of Israel, including states, municipalities, labor unions, cor- 
porations, and financial institutions all invested large sums 
in Israel bonds. 

Israel bonds were increasingly perceived as worthy in- 
vestments, as securities offered by State of Israel Bonds / De- 
velopment Corporation became diverse and market-respon- 
sive. In 1951, the sole offering was the Independence Issue, 
paying 3V& percent interest. Over the years, choices evolved 
into more than half a dozen options, including fixed rate secu- 
rities with interest determined by prevailing market rates, and 



variable rate securities linked to lib or (London Inter-bank 
Offered Rate). A significant aspect of the investment appeal 
of Israel bonds was the fact that Israel had never defaulted on 
payment of principal or interest. 

In the 1990s, the efforts of the Israel Bonds organization 
program took on an historic human dimension, with funds 
being utilized to assist in the resettlement of the more than 
one million immigrants from the former Soviet republics and 
Ethiopia. Included in the massive population influx were sci- 
entists, engineers, and scholars who helped take Israel into 
the next phase of its economic development, as the nation 
became a global high-tech powerhouse. With high-tech be- 
coming the engine driving Israels economy, capital from the 
sale of bonds helped build infrastructure to not only encour- 
age new innovations but to export "made in Israel" products 
around the world. 

In May of 2001, the Bonds program commemorated its 
50 th anniversary at a gala event in New York. Hundreds of sup- 
porters from throughout the world - including Israeli states- 
man and former prime minister Shimon *Peres - celebrated 
the extraordinary achievements stemming from Ben-Gurions 
vision of economic partnership with Israel. 

In September 2004, the Bank of Israel - Israel's equivalent 
of the Federal Reserve - completed a study in which it assessed 
the history of the Israel Bonds organization. The compre- 
hensive report praised Israel Bonds as "extremely important 
not just as a stable source for raising external capital but 
also for meeting other important goals (including) diversifi- 
cation of sources - particularly during times when the gov- 
ernment of Israel finds it difficult to raise funds from exter- 
nal sources." 

The report also commended the Israel Bonds message, 
which "emphasizes... the need to (invest in) the economic 
well-being and security of the State of Israel." 

By the beginning of the 21 st century, the Bonds organi- 
zation had provided Israel with $25 billion in development 
capital. As Israel began an intensified period of infrastruc- 
ture development that included enhanced transportation 
networks, port expansion, renewed industrial development, 
and continued cultivation of the Negev, the government again 
looked to Israel Bonds to help fund these ambitious new un- 
dertakings. 

[James S. Galfund (2 nd ed.)] 

BONDY, BOHUMIL (Gottlieb; 1832-1907), Czech politician, 
industrialist and author. In 1866 Bondy became head of his fa- 
thers iron works in Prague, which he expanded considerably. 
He was elected president of the Prague Chamber of Commerce 
(1884); the first Jew to be elected to any function on a Czech 
nationalist ticket. In 1885 he became president of the Industrial 
Museum. He also was a member of the Bohemian Diet. 

In 1906 he published Zur Geschichte der Juden in Boeh- 
men, Maehren und Schlesien, a two-volume collection of docu- 
ments dealing with the period 906-1620, edited by the direc- 
tor of the Bohemian Archives, Frantisek Dvorsky, in a Czech 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



59 



BONDY, CURT 



and a German edition. A projected third volume did not ap- 
pear. This collection of records is of particular importance, 
since about three-quarters of its contents were published for 
the first time. It is still a standard work for the student of Bo- 
hemian Jewish history. 

bibliography: Bondy-Dvorsky, 1 (1906), 3-4 (preface); 
Teytz, in: desko-zidovsky kalenddf (1907), 80-81; S.H. Lieben, in: 
mgwj, 50 (1906), 627-33; ZHB (1905), 17; The Jews of Czechoslova- 
kia, 1 (1968), 4-5. 

[Oskar K. Rabinowicz] 

BONDY, CURT (1894-1972), German psychologist, educa- 
tor, and author. Bondy was born and studied in Hamburg. He 
started his professional career as a research assistant at the 
Institute of Education of the University of Goettingen and 
returned to the University of Hamburg in 1925 as an associ- 
ate professor (full professor, 1930). He did research in social 
work with special emphasis on the problems of youth and ad- 
olescence, and juvenile delinquency. Bondy was compelled to 
leave Germany in 1933, when the Nazis came to power; he was 
involved in extensive refugee work in Europe and the U.S.A. 
until 1940, when he joined the psychology department at the 
College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, be- 
coming head of the department. In 1950 he returned to the 
University of Hamburg as professor of psychology and so- 
cial pedagogics and continued the research tradition of his 
teacher William Stern until 1959. Bondy wrote extensively for 
periodicals and professional journals and his major works in- 
clude Die proletarische Jugendbewegung in Deutschland (1922), 
Paedagogische Probleme im Jungend-Strafvollzug (1925), Be- 
dingungslose Jugend (with K. Eyferth; 1952), Social Psychology 
in Western Germany 1945-1955 (with K. Riegel; 1956), Youth 
in Western Germany (with O. Hilbig; 1957), and Probleme der 
Jugendhilfe (1957). 

add. bibliography: P. Probst, "Das Hamburgische Psy- 
chologische Institut (1911-1994)," in: K. Pawlik (ed.), Bericht iiber den 
39. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft fuer Psychologen in Hamburg 

1994, vol. 2 (1995)- 

[Ernest Schwarcz / Bjoern Siegel (2 nd ed.)] 

BONDY, FILIP (1830-1907), rabbi in Czechoslovakia; the first 
to preach in the Czech language. A pupil of S.J. *Rapoport and 
Aaron *Kornfeld, he graduated from Prague University and 
taught in Ceske-Budejovice from 1857 to 1859. He officiated 
as rabbi in *Kasejovice from 1859 to 1868 and in Brandys nad 
*Labem from 1868 to 1876. In 1886 he was appointed preacher 
at the Or Tamid Synagogue of the Czech- Jewish movement in 
Prague. His sermons Hlas Jakubuv ("The Voice of Jacob," 1886) 
and part of a Czech translation of Genesis, Uceni Mojzisovo 
("Teachings of Moses," 1902), were published. 

bibliography: Vyskodil, in: Judaica Bohemiae, 3 no. 1 (1967), 
42 (Ger.); Fischer, in: Kalenddf desko-zidovsky, 11 (1891/92), 59f.; Vest- 
nik zidovske obce ndbozenske, 9 no. 24 (1947), 145. 

BONDY, MAX (1893-1951), U.S. educator. Bondy, who was 
born in Hamburg, Germany, was head of several schools in 



Germany and Switzerland before he emigrated to the United 
States in 1939. The following year he founded the Windsor 
School in Windsor, Vermont. This progressive, coeducational 
school was designed to implement Bondys educational phi- 
losophy. The teaching was on a high level, with special em- 
phasis on languages. The pupils were self-governing and had 
equal voting rights with the teachers on all important matters. 
They were also trained to take an active part in the activities 
of the community. In 1943 the school moved to Lenox, Mas- 
sachusetts. After Bondys death, the school was directed by 
his widow, Gertrud. 

The Roeper School in Michigan and the Marienau School 
in Germany carry on the Bondy legacy and philosophy. The 
Roeper School was founded in Detroit in 1941 by German ed- 
ucators Annemarie Bondy Roeper, the Bondys' daughter, and 
her husband, George. It moved to Bloomfield Hills in 1946, 
and in 1956 was restructured as a coeducational day school for 
gifted children. The school had 640 students from 60 commu- 
nities throughout the greater Detroit metropolitan area and 
100 faculty members. From its inception, the student popula- 
tion has represented a wide variety of ethnic, cultural, racial, 
and economic backgrounds. The Roeper School's philosophy 
centers on the importance of fulfilling the positive potential 
of each individual. The school recognizes that all people are 
unique and develop according to their own timetable and plan. 
Students strive to fulfill their distinct destiny, to express them- 
selves sincerely, and to learn from the example of others. 

The Marienau boarding school in Hamburg, Germany, 
ranges from grades 5 to 13. Created in 1929 by Max and Dr. 
Gertrud Bondy, the school's concept that children should grow 
up in a natural, healthy environment still applies. Situated in 
idyllic surroundings, Marienau is an ecologically oriented 
school with 286 pupils and 44 teachers. 

The documentary film Across Time and Space: The World 
of Bondy Schools, produced and directed in 2002 by Kathryn 
Golden, tells the story of the Bondy family and their aspira- 
tion to teach children to succeed in life through tolerant, non- 
violent, workable school democracy. It explores the concept 
that democracy and tolerance begin within the institutions 
that educate the next generation. The tragic events of the Ho- 
locaust increased the Bondy family's dedication to their mis- 
sion - that equal rights for all people, particularly children, 
should be a priority. 

[Ernest Schwarcz / Ruth Beloff (2 nd ed.)] 

BONDY, RUTH (1923- ), journalist, translator, and writer. 
Bondy was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and survived 
three years in the Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Bergen- 
Belsen concentration camps. After returning to Czechoslo- 
vakia, she left for Israel in 1948, starting out as a teacher and 
then turning to journalism, mostly for the daily Davar, for 
which she wrote sketches, essays, and commentary. In 1980 
she started producing translations from Czech into Hebrew, 
including Hasek's Osudy dobreho vojdka Svejka za svetove vdlky 
("The Good Soldier Schweik"), the novels of Milan Kundera, 



60 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BONFIL, ROBERT 



Bohumil Hrabal, Ota Pavel, and Michal Viewegh; the essays 
of Vaclav Havel; Avigdor *Dagan's Hovory s Janem Masary- 
kem ("Conversations with Jan Masaryk"); and the works of 
Jifi *Weil, Josef *Bor, Jan Otcenasek, Jan Werich, and Jan 
Jandourek. In 1996 she was awarded the Czech Ministry of 
Culture Prize. 

Bondy also published several biographies - Ha-Shaliakh 
(1973; The Emissary^ 1977), a life of the Italian Zionist Enzo 
*Sereni; Edelstein neged ha-Zeman (1981; Elder of the Jews - 
Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt, 1989); and Pinhas Rosen u- 
Zemano ("Pinhas Rosen and His Time" 1991), a biography 
of Israels first minister of justice. Her autobiography, She- 
varim Sheleimim ("Whole Broken Pieces"), apeared in 1997 
and in 2003 she published in Czech Mezi ndmi feceno ("Be- 
tween Us"), an entertaining survey of the languages used by 
the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. In the same year she was 
awarded the Gratias agit prize by the Czech minister of for- 
eign affairs. 

[Milos Pojar (2 nd ed.)] 

BONE (or Bona, ancient Hippo Regius, named Annaba af- 
ter Algerian independence from French rule), Mediterranean 
port in northeastern Algeria close to the Tunisian border. Lo- 
cated on a gulf between capes Garde and Rosa, it became one 
of the Maghrebs centers for the Phoenician settlers around 
the 12 th century b.c.e. In later periods, Bone was dominated 
by the Romans before achieving its independence in the wake 
of the Punic Wars of 264-146 b.c.e. In 393 through 430 c.e. 
Bone emerged as one of the most important centers of Chris- 
tian learning. It then fell into ruin (431) as a result of the mas- 
sive assault by the Vandals. Aside from a Christian presence 
that had dwindled in the wake of the Arab conquest, only to 
be revitalized by the French conquest, it appears that a Jew- 
ish community existed in Bone from Roman times. When it 
was temporarily captured by Roger 11 of Sicily (1153), some of 
the Jews succeeded in organizing trade activity with Italian 
merchants from Pisa who established a trading post there. 
Although there is no solid evidence to suggest that Sephardi 
Jews arrived in Bone following their expulsion from Spain 
(1492), rabbinical respons a literature from the 1400s attests to 
a vibrant communal life. The city s synagogue, the "Ghriba," 
was the site of Jewish and Muslim pilgrims. Yet there are no 
available statistical data to determine the size of the commu- 
nity prior to the 19 th century. 

The economic and trade influence of Jews in Bone in- 
creased during the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries, when 
Algeria was part of the Ottoman Empire. Some of the most 
noteworthy and powerful Jewish merchants belonged to the 
Bensamon and Bacri families. Whereas the Bensamons ca- 
tered to British trade interests at the port of Bone, the Bacris, 
whose influence extended to other Algerian ports, were the 
chief representatives of French interests. 

In 1832, two years after France penetrated Algeria, Bone 
became a French possession. The French were instrumental 
in making Bone into a modern town. In the first decade of 



French rule the Jewish population increased due in part to 
an influx of several hundred migrants from Tunisia. During 
World War 11 the Jews numbered over 3,000. They were natu- 
ralized French citizens like the rest of Algerian Jewry by vir- 
tue of the October 1870 Cremieux Decree. 

There were no Jews in Bone after 1964-65, a situation at- 
tributable to the overall decolonization process, Jewish com- 
munal self-liquidation, and the exodus to France and Israel. 

bibliography: A.N. Chouraqui, Between East and West: A 
History of the Jews of North Africa (1973); C.-A. Julien, A History of 
North Africa: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco from the Arab Conquest to 
1830 (ed. and rev. by R. Le Tourneau; 1970); J.M. Abun-Nasr, A His- 
tory of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (1987). 

[Michael M. Laskier (2 nd ed.)] 

BONFIL, ROBERT (1937- ), historian of the Jews of medi- 
eval, Renaissance, and early modern Italy. Bonfil was born in 
Greece and ordained at the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano. He 
received the Laurea in Physics at the University of Turin (i960) 
and served as assistant to the chief rabbi of Milan (1959-62) 
and then as acting chief rabbi of Milan (1962-1968). In 1968 
he immigrated to Israel, receiving his Ph.D. in Jewish history 
from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1976. He obtained 
full-time appointment at the Hebrew University in 1980, be- 
coming full professor in 1990 and retiring in 2005. He was co- 
editor of the periodical Italia (1976-92) and sole editor from 
1992. He was a member of numerous editorial boards and 
served as a visiting professor at leading institutions in Italy, 
France, and the United States. 

Bonfils scholarship is characterized by a thorough ac- 
quaintance with Classical Graeco-Roman literature, the Pa- 
tristic and Medieval Christian tradition, European and espe- 
cially Renaissance and Baroque Italian history, literature and 
philosophy, and the classical Jewish legal, philosophical, mys- 
tical, and historical texts, to which he applies the latest meth- 
odologies in historical and literary criticism. 

Commencing with his article, "The Historians Percep- 
tion of the Jews in the Italian Renaissance: Towards a Reap- 
praisal" (rej, 143 (1984), 59-82), Bonfil pioneered the now 
increasingly accepted rejection of the view, based on Jacob 
Burckhardts approach to the Renaissance, that the Jews as- 
similated and were harmoniously integrated into Italian so- 
ciety during the Renaissance. Rather, he pointed out, Chris- 
tian Italian society did not break with the traditional hostile 
Catholic approach to the Jews, who continued to be restricted 
by legislation enacted by the secular authorities in accordance 
with the theology of the Catholic Church. Additionally, as he 
further argued, especially in his Jewish Life in Renaissance It- 
aly^ rather than thinking primarily in terms of the influence of 
the surroundings on the Jews and their conscious borrowing 
and assimilation, instead one should posit an acceptance of 
the surroundings as representing the natural unself-conscious 
way of doing things, realizing that the Jews maintained their 
identity because they considered the essence of Judaism to lie 
not in a cultural differentiation from Christianity but rather 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



61 



BONFILS, IMMANUEL BEN JACOB 



in a religious differentiation, so only those patterns of thought 
that were considered to be specific organic characteristics of 
Christianity had to be rejected. 

Other publications include Rabbis and Jewish Commu- 
nities in Renaissance Italy (1990) and Tra due mondi: cultura 
ebraica e cultura cristiana nel Medioevo (1996). 

bibliography: H. Tirosh-Samuelson, "Jewish Culture in 

Renaissance Italy: A Methodological Survey," in: Italia, 9 (1990), 

63-96; D. Ruderman, "The Cultural Significance of the Ghetto in 

Jewish History," in: D.N. Myers and W, Rowe (eds.), From Ghetto to 

Emancipation (1997), 1-16. 

[Benjamin Ravid (2 nd ed.)] 

BONFILS, IMMANUEL BEN JACOB (14 th century), of Tar- 
ascon (in Provence, France), mathematician and astronomer. 
He is chiefly known for his astronomical tables called Shesh- 
Kenafayim ("Six Wings" - cf. Isa. 6:2) which were written in 
Hebrew about 1365 and which were subsequently translated 
into both Latin (in 1406) and Byzantine Greek (c. 1435). These 
tables are preserved in many manuscript copies and the He- 
brew version was published (Zhitomir, 1872). The author is 
often referred to in Hebrew as Baal ha-Kenafayim ("Master 
of Wings"). Each "wing" contains a number of astronomical 
tables concerning the movements of the sun and the moon 
for determining the times and magnitudes of solar and lunar 
eclipses as well as the day of the new moon. The tables them- 
selves are largely based on the tables of the ninth -century Arab 
astronomer al-Battani (known in Latin as Albategnius), as the 
author acknowledges in the preface. But they are presented 
according to the Jewish calendar and adapted to the longi- 
tude and latitude of Tarascon. These tables were consulted by 
European scholars as late as the seventeenth century. Bonfils 
is also known to have made astronomical observations, and 
his discussion of decimal fractions is among the earliest pre- 
sentations of the subject. 

bibliography: Renan, Ecrivains, 692-99; je, 3 (1902), 306; 
M. Steinschneider, Mathematik bei denjuden (1964), i55fi\; TheHexa- 
pterygon [Six Wings] of Michael Chrysokokhes, ed. and tr. by RC. So- 
lon (unpublished thesis, Brown University, 1968); Gandz, in: Isis, 25 
(1936), 16-45; Saidan, ibid., 57 (1966), 475-89; Petri Gassendi Opera 

Omnia, 5 (1964), 313. 

[Bernard R. Goldstein] 

BONFILS (Tov Elem), JOSEPH BEN ELIEZER (second 
half of the 14 th century), author of a supercommentary on the 
biblical commentary of Abraham *Ibn Ezra. Joseph was born 
in Spain and journeyed to the East. In ^Damascus, in 1370, 
at the request of the nagid David b. Joshua he wrote a super- 
commentary, Zafenat Pa c aneah, on Ibn Ezras commentary 
on the Pentateuch - the most exhaustive and precise of the 
many supercommentaries on Ibn Ezra. In a clear and com- 
prehensive exposition he solves Ibn Ezras "enigmas" and de- 
fends him against the suspicion of heresy which certain of his 
critical views (with which Joseph manifestly sympathizes) had 
aroused against him. The supercommentary was published, 
but with the omission of the passages dealing with the criti- 



cal views, under the title Ohel Yosef, in Margalit Tovah (1722), 
an anthology of supercommentaries on Ibn Ezra, and later in 
a critical edition by D. Herzog (1912-1930). From Damascus, 
Joseph went to settle in Jerusalem. 

bibliography: M.Z. Segal, in: ks, 9 (1932/33), 302-4, no. 
1025; Krauss, in: Sinai, 5 (Bucharest, 1933); N. Ben-Menahem, in: 
Sinai, 9 (1941), 353~5- 

BONFILS (Tov Elem), JOSEPH BEN SAMUEL (11 th cen- 
tury), the first French scholar about whom more than his 
name is known; called by Rashis disciples "R. Joseph the 
Great." A contemporary and colleague of R. Elijah the Elder 
of Le Mans, he was born in Narbonne, but lived at Limoges 
and at Anjou. Bonfils was among the early few who shaped the 
Jewish way of life and halakhic tradition in France and Ger- 
many; his principal decisions are frequently quoted by later 
rabbinic authorities. His positive attitude toward the recita- 
tion of piyyutim in the prayers (Shibbolei ha-Leket, Prayers, 
28) and his decisions with regard to taxation exerted particu- 
larly great influence, the latter serving as a basis for the later 
takkanot ("regulations") of the Jewish communities in France 
and Germany. Bonfils copied in his own hand and for his 
own personal use, some of the more important books of his 
predecessors, and the later rishonim relied heavily on these 
copies in order to establish correct versions of these texts. 
Among these books are: Halakhot Gedolot (cf. Semag, Lavin, 
60 end; Tos. to Naz. 59a); Seder Tanndim ve-Amordim (Tos. 
to Naz. 57b); Seder Tikkun Shetarot (Tos. to Git. 85b); Hilkhot 
Terefot by *Gershom b. Judah and Teshuvot ha-Gebnim (Tos. 
to Hul. 46-47; Tos. to Pes. 30a); as well as works on Hebrew 
grammar, liturgy and masorah. There is no basis for S.J. *Rapo- 
ports assumption that the collection of geonic responsa pub- 
lished by D. Cassel (Teshuvot Gebnim Kadmonim, Berlin, 1848) 
is the one copied by Bonfils. Bonfils belongs to the classical 
French school of paytanim and his piyyutim are composed in 
the difficult language adopted by the writers of this genre, all 
being based on midrashic material, interspersed with numer- 
ous halakhot concerning the day on which the piyyutim are to 
be recited. Early authorities quoted from his piyyutim in or- 
der to arrive at halakhic decisions (Tos. to Pes. 115b; OrZarua 
2:256; Raban, 532). Some of Bonfils* piyyutim are to be found 
in the mahzor according to the French rite, but for the most 
part they have been superseded by later compositions easier to 
follow. Of his commentary on the Pentateuch, mentioned by 
Isaac de Lattes, not even one quotation has been preserved. 

bibliography: D. Kassel (ed.), Teshuvot Gebnim Kadmonim 
(1848), introd. by S.J.L. Rapoport; Gross, Gal Jud, 308; Davidson, Ozar, 
4 ^933 )> 4°4> S.V. YosefTov Elem (ben Shemuel). 

[Israel Moses Ta-Shma] 

°BONFRERE, JACQUES (1573-1642), Belgian Jesuit, pro- 
fessor of Hebrew and Bible exegesis. Bonfrere wrote a com- 
mentary on the Pentateuch (Pentateuchus Moysis commen- 
tario illu stratus..., Antwerp, 1625), which has been reedited 
several times. The book has a strong mystical kabbalistic ten- 



62 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BONN 



dency. He also wrote a commentary on Joshua, Judges, and 
Ruth (Paris, 1631). 

bibliography: C. Sommervogel et al., Bibliotheque de la 
Compagnie de Jesus, 1 (1890), 1713-15; F. Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chre- 
tiens de la Renaissance (1964), 232. 

[Francois Secret] 

°BONIFACE, name of nine popes. Only the last two showed 
significant evidence of concern with the Jews of Europe. 

boniface viii 1294-1303, in his Jewish policy displayed 
an attitude substantially like that of his 13 th -century predeces- 
sors. In 1295 he commended a citizen of Paris for having estab- 
lished a chapel on the spot where a miracle was said to have 
occurred when some Jews were supposed to have tortured a 
consecrated wafer (see Desecration of the *Host). The same 
year the pope objected to the erection of a new synagogue in 
Trier, Germany. In 1297 he praised the queen of Sicily for hav- 
ing expropriated the property of Jewish usurers and urged her 
to use the money for the benefit of the poor. In 1300 he him- 
self ordered the expulsion of Jewish and Christian usurers 
from *Avignon. But outweighing the above was his favorable 
response in 1299 to the complaints of the Jews of Rome and 
Avignon against inquisitors who accused them of illegal acts 
and then compelled them to answer the charges in some dis- 
tant court. Claiming that Jews were in the category of those 
powerful enough to overawe witnesses, inquisitors refused 
to divulge the names of those who accused Jews of encourag- 
ing heresy. Jews, the pope maintained, were not necessarily 
powerful. One of his decisions became part of Canon Law, 
namely that Jews, even minors, once baptized must remain 
Christians. 

boniface ix. 1389-1404 showed exceptional favor to 
the Jews of Rome. The city had become impoverished because 
of the absence of the Papal Court for the greater part of the 
14 th century; subsequently it was further afflicted by a succes- 
sion of plagues, during which Jewish physicians had shown 
great skill in serving the sick of all classes. The pope contin- 
ued and even amplified the favors shown these physicians by 
his predecessor, Urban vi, especially to Manuel and his son 
Angelo. He included them among his f am iliares (members of 
his household), reduced their taxes, and freed them from the 
obligation of wearing the Jewish *badge. Several other physi- 
cians were likewise favored, and the Jews of Rome in general 
profited from this attitude. The papal chamberlain, acting on 
behalf of the pope, eased the regulations on the badge, allevi- 
ated the tax burden, and even spoke of the Jews as "citizens." 
The pope could not show an equally friendly attitude to Jews 
outside the papal territory, since this was the period of the 
Great Schism in the church and various states wavered in their 
obedience to the pope in Rome. 

bibliography: M. Stern, Urkundliche Beitraege ueber die 
Stellung der Paepste zu den Juden, 2 vols. (1893-95), passim; Vogel- 
stein-Rieger, 1 (1896), 255-8, 317-9; E. Rodocanachi, Le Saint-Siege 
et les Juifs (1891), passim. 

[Solomon Grayzel] 



BONJORN, BONET DAVl(D), called De Barrio (14 th cen- 
tury), Spanish physician and astronomer. He lived in Perpig- 
nan, where he also engaged occasionally in moneylending 
activities. Here he manufactured astronomical instruments 
for Pedro iv of Aragon. His wife exerted pressure on him to 
divorce her by withholding his astronomical instruments. 
His son, the famous astronomer jacob bonet or jacob poel 
drew up astronomical tables for the year 1361 for the latitude 
of this city. Jacobs son davi(d) bonet bonjorn was autho- 
rized to practice medicine at Perpignan in 1390 after exami- 
nation by two Christian physicians. His baptism in 1391 is 
said to have occasioned the famous satiric pamphlet Al Tehi 
ka-Avotekha ("Be Not as Your Fathers") by his friend Profiat 
*Duran. 

bibliography: E.C. Girbal, Los Judios en Gerona (1870); 
Renan, Ecrivains, 701, 742, 746; Baer, Urkunden, 1 (1929), 259; Baer, 
Spain, 2 (1965), index; S. Sorbreques Vidal, Anales de Estudios Gerun- 
denses (1947), 1-31; Millas Vallicrosa, in: Sefarad, 19 (1959), 365-71; F. 
Cantera Burgos, Alvar Garcia de Santa Maria (1952), 3i8f.; Thorndike, 
in: Isis, 34 (1943), 6-7, 410. 

[Cecil Roth] 

BONN (in medieval Hebrew literature K312), city in west- 
central Germany on the Rhine river and capital of West Ger- 
many from 1949 to 1990. During the First Crusade in 1096 
the Jews in Bonn were martyred. A Jewish community again 
existed there in the 12 th century which, following a murder 
accusation, had to pay the emperor and the bishop a fine of 
400 marks. A Platea Judaeorum is recorded in Bonn before 
1244. The Jews engaged in moneylending and many became 
wealthy. In an outbreak of violence on June 8, 1288, 104 Jews 
were killed. During the *Black Death (1348-49) the commu- 
nity was attacked and annihilated; the archbishop took over 
its property and pardoned the burghers for the crimes they 
had committed. Subsequently, there is no record of Jewish 
residence in Bonn until 1381. During 1421-22 there were 11 
Jewish families who paid the archbishop of ^Cologne an an- 
nual tax of 82 gulden. The Jews were expelled in the 15 th cen- 
tury, but later returned. In 1578 the Jewish quarter was looted 
and many Jews were taken captive by a Protestant army be- 
sieging Bonn; they were later ransomed. During the 17 th cen- 
tury the Jews in Bonn, who lived under the protection of the 
elector, mainly engaged in cattle- dealing and moneylending. 
They were attacked in 1665 by students from nearby *Deutz. 
The Jewish street was destroyed during a siege in 1689, but a 
new Jewish quarter with 17 houses and a synagogue was built 
in 1715. It was closed at night by guarded gates. Bonn was the 
seat of the *Landrabbiner of the Electorate of Cologne in the 
17 th and 18 th centuries. Several *Court Jews resided in Bonn; 
some of them lived outside the Jewish quarter, including the 
celebrated physician Moses Wolff, the musician Solomon, and 
the court agent Simon Baruch (the grandfather of Ludwig 
*Boerne). The Jews in Bonn suffered from a number of anti- 
Jewish regulations. The Jewish quarter was severely damaged 
by a flood in 1784. 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



63 



BONN, HANUS 



During the occupation of Bonn by the French revolution- 
ary army (1794), the Jews were declared citizens with equal 
rights, and the gate of the ghetto was publicly torn down. Two 
delegates from the Bonn community attended the ^Assembly 
of Jewish Notables convened by *Napoleon in Paris in 1806. 
A Jewish elementary school with an attendance of 22 boys 
and 15 girls was opened in 1829; a society for the promotion 
of Jewish craftsmen was founded in 1840; and there existed 
several social institutions and associations. The i8 th -century 
synagogue was replaced by a new one in 1878, which followed 
the * Re form rite. The community numbered 296 in 1796; 536 
in 1871; and 1,228 in 1919. From its earliest days the commu- 
nity in Bonn was celebrated as a center of Jewish learning. 
Among the tosafists who lived there during the 12 th century 
were *Joel b. Isaac ha-Levi (Ravyah), *Samuel b. Natronai, 
and *Ephraim b. Jacob. Toward the end of the 16 th century the 
rabbi of Bonn was Hayyim b. Johanan Treves, a commentator 
of the mahzor. Ludwig *Philippson and Moses *Hess lived in 
Bonn, and in 1879 there were five Jewish professors and lec- 
turers at Bonn University. 

In 1933 there were around 1,000 Jews in Bonn. In 1938 
the synagogues were destroyed in the course of *Kristallnacht. 
In May 1939, 464 Jews remained after flight and emigration. 
In the summer of 1941 those still there were sent to a Bene- 
dictine monastery in Endenich, where they were joined by 
families evicted from Duisburg, Beuel, and other communi- 
ties. During June and July 1942 about 400 Jewish inhabitants 
of the monastery (including around 200 from Bonn) were 
deported to Theresienstadt and Lodz in four transports; only 
seven survived. Jews in mixed marriages were sent to forced 
labor camps in September 1944. After the war a new com- 
munity was formed and numbered 155 in 1967, mainly elderly 
persons. A new synagogue was opened in 1959. There were 
826 community members in 2003, of whom 739 were recent 
immigrants from the former Soviet Union. 

bibliography: E. Simons, Geschichte derjuedischen Gemein- 
den im Bonner Raum (1959); J. Buecher, Zur Geschichte derjuedischen 
Gemeinde in Beuel (1965); Germ Jud, 1 (1963), 46-60; 2 (1968), 93-95; 
Wiener Library, London, German Jewry (1958), 42f.; A. Levy, Aus Bon- 
ner Archiven (1929), 32; H. Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne 
Staat, 4 (1963), i6yff.; 6 (1967), 172-90; Neugebauer, in: Bonner Ge- 
schichtsblaetter, 18 (1964), 158-227; 19 (1965), 196-206; M. Braubach, 
in: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblaetter, 32 (1968), 402-18. add. bibliog- 
raphy: M. Brocke, Der alte juedische Friedhof Bonn-Schwarzrhein- 
dorf (1998); B. Klein, in: Hirt und Herde (2002), 251-278. 

[Ze'ev Wilhem Falk] 

BONN, HANUS (1913-1941), Czech poet whose lyrical po- 
ems have much common with the poetry of Jifi *Orten. Bonn 
was born in Teplice and was active in the Czech-Jewish move- 
ment and as editor of the "Czech- Jewish Calendar" (Kalenddf 
ceskozidovsky) in 1937-39. In 1936, a collection of his poems, 
Tolik krajin ("So Many Landscapes"), appeared, followed in 
1938 by an anthology of the poetry of primitive nations in 
his own translation, Daleky hlas ("A Distant Voice"). He also 



translated the stories of Kafka and the poetry of Rilke. In 1939 
and 1940, he had to publish some of his poems under a pseud- 
onym. At the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslo- 
vakia, he was active in the department of emigration of the 
Prague Jewish community, where he tried to help his Jewish 
compatriots. He was soon sent to the Mauthausen concentra- 
tion camp, where he was tortured to death. After the war his 
collected works were published under the title Dila ("Works," 
1947), with an introduction by Vaclav Cerny, and in 1995 as 
Dozpev ("A Final Song") with an epilogue by Zdenek Urbanek 
but without Bonn's translations. 

bibliography: Lexikon deske literatury ("Dictionary of 
Czech Literature"), vol. 1 (1985); A. MikulaSek et al., Literatura s 
hvezdou Davidovou ("Literature with the Shield of David"), vol. 1; A. 
Dagan, The Jews of Czechoslovakia (1968). 

[Milos Pojar (2 nd ed.)] 

BONN, MORITZ JULIUS (1873-1965), German economist. 
Bonn was descended from a family of bankers in Frankfurt. 
He studied economics at Heidelberg, Munich, and Vienna. 
During this period he was strongly influenced by the "Kathed- 
ersozialist" Lujo von Brentano. In 1895 he completed his Ph.D. 
under the supervision of Brentano. Afterwards he attended 
the London School of Economics. In 1910 he became found- 
ing director of the College of Commerce in Munich. Travels 
led him to Great Britain, Italy, the U.S., and Africa. Bonn be- 
came an expert on international financial affairs. From 1914 
he taught in the United States, and was politically active on 
behalf of Germany. In 1917, just before America entered World 
War 1, he returned home. In 1921 he was appointed profes- 
sor at the Berlin College of Commerce, and became its rec- 
tor in 1931. He was a member of the German delegation to 
the Versailles peace negotiations, and subsequently adviser 
to German chancellors on reparation problems. During the 
financial conference in Spain 1920, Bonn was - together with 
Walther *Rathenau, Carl *Melchior, and others - one of the 
founders of the idea of the "policy of fulfillment" concerning 
the reparation payments of the Germans after World War 1. 
In 1922 he took part at the international conference in Ge- 
noa. In 1930-32 Bonn worked as an expert for the League of 
Nations. As a left-wing liberal Bonn criticized the German 
political situation, which eventually led to the rise of Hitler. 
When the Nazis came to power in 1933 Bonn emigrated to 
England, fearful of being further persecuted as a Jew. There 
he taught at the London School of Economics, but spent much 
of his time in the United States teaching, lecturing, and writ- 
ing. He died in London and, at his request, his remains were 
brought for burial to Kronberg, near Frankfurt. His writings 
include Nationale Kolonialpolitik (1910), Grundfragen der eng- 
lischen Volkswirtschaft (1913), Die Balkanfrage (1914), Nord- 
merikanische Fragen (1914), Die Auflosung des modernen Statu- 
tes (1921), Der Friedensvertrag und Deutschlands Stellung in 
der Welt wirtsch aft (1921), Die Stabilisierung der Mark (1922), 
Die Krisis der europaischen Demokratie (1925), Amerika und 
sein Problem (1925), Kapitalismus oder Feudalismus? (1932), 



64 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BONSENYOR, JUDAH 



Wahrungsprojekte und warum? (1932), The American Experi- 
ment (1934), The Crumbling of Empire: The Disintegration of 
the World Economy (1938), and his autobiography, Wander- 
ing Scholar (1948). 

[Joachim O. Ronall / Christian Schoelzel (2 nd ed.)] 

BONNE, ALFRED ABRAHAM (1899-1959), Israeli econo- 
mist. Bonne, who was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and stud- 
ied in Munich, settled in Palestine in 1925. From 1931 to 1936 he 
directed the Economic Archives for the Near East in Jerusalem. 
In 1943 he was appointed director of the Economic Research 
Institute of the Jewish Agency and a year later became pro- 
fessor of economics at the Hebrew University. Bonne was the 
first controller of foreign exchange of the State of Israel, and 
from 1955 until his death was dean of the Hebrew University s 
School of Economics and Social Sciences. Best known among 
his numerous publications are his studies on the economy of 
Palestine and Israel; social and economic development in the 
Middle East; and theoretical and empirical issues of growth 
in developing areas. Against the background of Jewish expe- 
rience in Palestine, Bonne developed a theory of implanted 
development in underdeveloped countries, with particular 
tasks assigned to government undertakings carried out with 
the aid of foreign investment. His major publications include: 
Palaestina; Land und Wirtschaft (1932); Der neue Orient (1937); 
State and Economics in the Middle East; a Society in Transition 
(1948); and Studies in Economic Development (1957). 

bibliography: A Selected Bibliography of Books and Papers 

of the Late Prof A. Bonne (i960). 

[Zvi Yehuda Hershlag] 

BONNER, ELENA GEORGIEVNA (1923- ), Russian phy- 
sician and human rights activist; second wife of Soviet physi- 
cist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, Bonner was 
born in Merv (Mary) in Turkmenia. Her mother, Ruth Bon- 
ner, came from an assimilated Jewish family in Siberia. Her 
father and stepfather (who raised her) were both Armenians. 
Her parents, who were active in the Communist Party, were 
arrested in 1937. Her stepfather was executed, while her mother 
spent 17 years in labor camps and internal exile before her re- 
lease and rehabilitation in 1954. 

Bonner volunteered as a nurse after the German inva- 
sion of Soviet territory in 1941. She was wounded twice before 
her honorable discharge in 1945 as a lieutenant and a disabled 
veteran. After two years of intensive treatment of her wartime 
injury, she enrolled in the First Leningrad Medical Institute, 
graduated in 1953, worked as a pediatrician, a district doctor, 
and a freelance writer, and in the smallpox vaccination cam- 
paign for the World Health Organization in Iraq in 1959. 

She began to help political prisoners and their families 
in the 1940s. In the late 1960s, she became active in the Soviet 
human rights movement. Bonner knew Eduard Kuznetsov, a 
Jewish refusenik, who helped plan an attempt to hijack an air- 
plane from Leningrad in June 1970. She campaigned for com- 
mutation of his and another defendants death sentence, visited 



Kuznetsov in prison, and smuggled to safety the manuscript of 
his prison diaries, which were published in English in 1975. 

Bonner met Andrei Sakharov at a trial of political pris- 
oners in Kaluga in 1970; they married in 1972. Under pressure 
from Sakharov, the regime permitted her to travel to the West 
in 1975, 1977, and 1979 for treatment of her wartime injury. In 
1975, Sakharov, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was barred 
from travel by the Soviet regime. Bonner was already in Italy 
for medical treatment and was able to represent her husband 
at the Nobel ceremony in Oslo. 

She joined the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group in 1976. 
Sakharov was exiled to Gorky in January 1980. In spite of ha- 
rassment and public denunciation, Bonner became his life- 
line, traveling between Gorky and Moscow to bring out his 
writings. Her arrest in April 1984 for "anti-Soviet slander" and 
subsequent sentence of five years of exile in Gorky disrupted 
their lives again. Sakharovs long and painful hunger strikes 
forced Mikhail Gorbachev to let Bonner travel to the United 
States in 1985 for sextuple bypass heart surgery. 

Gorbachev allowed Sakharov and Bonner to return to 
Moscow in December 1986. Following Sakharovs death three 
years later, Bonner remained outspoken. She joined the de- 
fenders of the Russian parliament during the attempted coup 
in August 1991 and supported Boris Yeltsin during the con- 
stitutional crisis in early 1993. She soon established the An- 
drei Sakharov Foundation, and separate Sakharov Archives 
in Moscow and the United States. Outraged by genocidal at- 
tacks on the Chechen people, Bonner resigned from Yeltsins 
Human Rights Commission in 1994. She remained critical 
of the Kremlin for its ongoing policies in Chechnya and the 
increasingly authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin. A genuine 
internationalist, Bonner regarded herself as a Jew in the face 
of antisemitism; an Armenian when Armenians were threat- 
ened; and a Kurd when Kurds were under assault. She is the 
author of Alone Together (1987) and Mothers and Daughters 
(1992), along with numerous articles. 

[Joshua Rubenstein (2 nd ed.)] 

BONSENYOR, JUDAH (or Jafuda; d. 1331), physician and 
Arabic interpreter for the Aragonese court. Judah s father, 
Astruc b. Judah Bonsenyor (d. 1280), had previously served 
in the same capacity, originally as assistant to Bahye Alcon- 
stantini. Judah accompanied Alfonso 11 1 as Arabic inter- 
preter during the expedition against Minorca in 1287. In 1294 
James 11 appointed him general secretary for Arabic docu- 
ments and deeds drawn up in Barcelona. He was commis- 
sioned by James 11 to compile an anthology of maxims from 
Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew sources and translate them into 
Catalan - the Llibre de paraules e dits de savis efilosofs. Judah 
also translated a medical treatise from the Arabic. 

bibliography: J. Bonsenyor, Llibre de paraules e dits de sa- 
vis efilosofs, ed. by G. Llabres y Quintana (1889), pref., 123-32 (doc- 
uments); M. Kayserling, in: jqr, 8 (1895/96), 632-42; Cardoner Pla- 
nas, in: Sefarad, 4 (1944), 287-93; Baer, Spain, 2 (1966), 6, 460 n.9 
(bibliography). 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



65 



BONYHAD 



BONYHAD, town in Tolna County, in southwestern Hun- 
gary. The national census of 1746 listed 13 Jewish heads of fam- 
ilies with 30 dependents. The Jewish community grew from 
382 in 1781 to a peak of 2,351 in 1852. Many of the wealthier 
Jews moved to larger neighboring towns, including Pecs. By 
1910, the number of Jews had declined to 1,153 (16.4% of the 
total), by 1920 to 1,058 (15.2%), and by 1930 to 1,022 (14.6%). 
According to the census of 1941, the last before the Holocaust, 
Bonyhad had a Jewish population of 1,159, representing 13.9% 
of the total of 8,333. Th e original Jewish section of the town, 
including the synagogue and the communal buildings, was de- 
stroyed in a fire in 1794. To commemorate the disaster Abra- 
ham Leib Freistadt, who was appointed Rabbi of Bonyhad in 
1780, composed an elegy, which was recited annually on the 
first Sabbath after Passover. A new synagogue was built, re- 
portedly by voluntary Jewish labor, in 1796. A bet ha-midrash 
was established in 1802, and the community's first yeshivah 
shortly thereafter. Bonyhad had a number of distinguished 
spiritual leaders, including Isaac Seckel Spitz of Nikolsburg 
(d. 1768), author of Be'ur Yitzhak (Pressburg, 1790), a com- 
mentary on the Haggadah; Judah Aryeh Bisenc (d. 1781); Ben- 
jamin Zeev b. Samuel *Boskowitz; Tzvi Hirsch *Heller; Isaac 
Moses *Perles, who, after a long struggle with the pro -Reform- 
ists, had to leave Bonyhad; Moses *Pollak (1846-1889), whose 
yeshivah became famous; Judah Gruenwald (d. 1920), author 
of Zikhron Yehudah (1923); and Eliezer Hayyim *Deutsch. In 
1868 the community split, forming separate Orthodox and 
Neolog (Conservative) congregations. In the early 1940s, the 
Orthodox community had 750 members led by Rabbis Aron 
Pressburger and Abraham Pollak. The Neolog congregation 
had 376 members, led by Rabbi Lajos Schwarz. Both congre- 
gations had their separate communal, social, and educational 
institutions. 

During World War 11 the Jews were subjected to severe 
discriminatory measures. Many among the Jewish males were 
mobilized for forced labor. After the German occupation in 
March 1944, the Jews were first isolated and their property 
expropriated. According to a May 5 report by the deputy pre- 
fect of Tolna county, Bonyhad then had a Jewish population of 
1,268. On May 15, the Jews were ordered into two local ghettos; 
The "upper ghetto" was set up in the communal buildings of 
the Neolog congregation; the "lower ghetto" in and around the 
Orthodox synagogue. The two ghettos had 1,344 Jews, includ- 
ing those brought in from Bataszek and from the neighboring 
villages in the district of Volgyseg. Among these were the Jews 
of Aparhant, Kakasd, Kety, Kisvejke, Szalka, Tevel, and Zomba. 
On June 28, approximately 60 Jewish patients from a men- 
tal institution in Szekszard were transferred to the Bonyhad 
ghetto. The ghetto population was first transferred to the local 
sports arena from where two days later they were taken to the 
Lakics army barracks in Pecs - the concentration and depor- 
tation center for the Jews in Baranya and Tolna counties. The 
Jews concentrated in Bonyhad were deported to Auschwitz 
on July 4, 1944. Among them was Rabbi Aron Pressburger, 
who perished there. On October 17, approximately 1,200 Jew- 



ish labor servicemen stationed in and around Bonyhad were 
massacred by the ss. 

During the immediate postwar period, the community 
consisted of 352 Jews, mostly labor servicemen and camp 
survivors. By 1949, the Orthodox and Neolog congregations 
were reestablished. The former had 172 members led by Rabbi 
David Moskovits with Mano Galandauer serving as president. 
The Neolog congregation had 108 members led by Janos Eis- 
ner. Both congregations disappeared soon after the Hungar- 
ian Revolution of 1956. By 1963, Bonyhad had only four Jew- 
ish families left. 

bibliography: mhj, 8 (1963), 35 (introd. by A. Scheiber), 
802; J.J. Greenwald, Ha-Yehudim be-Ungarya (1917); J. Eisner, A 
bonyhddi zsidok tortenete (1965). add. bibliography: Braham, 
Politics; L. Blau, Bonyhad: A Destroyed Community (1994); pk Hun- 
garia, 224-26. 

[Abraham Schischa / Randolph Braham (2 nd ed.)] 

BOOKBINDER, HYMAN H. (1916- ), U.S. social activist, 
Jewish community leader. Hyman Bookbinder exhibited an 
interest in civic concerns from an early age. In his own words, 
"Born into a world that soon exposed me to depression, war, 
and the Holocaust, I fast acquired an almost compulsive in- 
terest in public affairs." His father, Louis Bookbinder, was an 
avid member of the Workmen's Circle. 

In 1934, at the age of 18, Bookbinder joined the Young 
People Socialist League, known informally as Yipsels. In 1937, 
he graduated from City College of New York with a degree in 
social science. He then worked as a clerk for the Amalgamated 
Clothing Workers from 1938 to 1943 while continuing his work 
for Yipsel. When World War 11 broke out, his socialist-pacifist 
leanings led him to oppose American involvement in the war 
and he registered for the draft "with the strongest protest," re- 
questing "conscientious objector status." However, as the news 
of Hitlers atrocities became known, Bookbinders conscience 
roiled. Inevitably, Yipsels lack of support for the war led Book- 
binder to finally withdraw from the party. 

After serving in the U.S. Navy, Bookbinder again worked 
for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union (1946-50). 
Following this, he continued to work on behalf of labor in- 
terests. He advocated for the Production Authority (1951-53), 
represented the Congress of Industrialized Organizations 
(1953-55), an d lobbied for the American Federation of Labor 
(1955-60). 

In his memoir, Off the Wall (1991), Bookbinder recounts 
the social upheaval of the 1960s and his participation in 
the civil rights movement and his efforts to further equal 
opportunity for all Americans, regardless of race, gender, 
or creed. He served on President Kennedys Committee 
on the Status of Women (1961-63). The committee was chaired 
by Eleanor Roosevelt. Known by friends and in Washington 
political circles as "Bookie," Bookbinder became the execu- 
tive officer of the Presidents Task Force on Poverty in 1964. 
He was also assistant director of the Office of Equal Oppor- 
tunity (1964) and special liaison and advisor to Vice Pres- 



66 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOOK OF THE COVENANT 



ident Hubert Humphrey regarding the "war on poverty" 
(1964-67). 

In 1968, Bookbinder shifted the focus of his career. A trip 
to Israel in 1966 (his first) along with the 1967 Six-Day War 
"stimulated" his "sense of Jewishness." Offered the position 
of Washington, d.c, representative to the ^American Jewish 
Committee (ajc), he decided to take it. The ajc s dual com- 
mitment to Jews and liberalism and the leeway it granted its 
top staff allowed Bookbinder to both promote ajc s Jewish 
agenda (i.e., asserting Israels "right to exist in peace and se- 
curity with its neighbors" and fighting antisemitism) as well 
as continue his work on behalf of the poor and victims of 
discrimination. Through two decades of service, he became 
one of the most widely recognized and respected advocates 
for Jewish and liberal causes. In 1986, Bookbinder was made 
representative emeritus. 

In addition, Bookbinder took upon himself a num- 
ber of other civic responsibilities. He chaired public policy 
for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (1972-77). He 
was a member of the Presidents Commission on the Holo- 
caust (1979-80) and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council 
(1980-85). He was also Washington chair of the ad-hoc Coali- 
tion for the Ratification of the Genocide Treaty (1970-87) and 
special advisor to Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988. Book- 
binder was also the founding member of the National Jewish 
Democratic Council. A passionate moderate, he brought to 
bear the fervor usually associated with extremists and cre- 
ated a dialogue if not consensus around the major issues of 

his concern. 

[Yehuda Martin Hausman (2 nd ed.)] 

BOOK OF THE COVENANT (Heb. Sefer ha-Berit), name 
derived from Exodus 24:7 ("And he took the book of the 

covenant, and read it aloud to the people "), and usually 

taken to refer to the legal, moral, and cultic corpus of litera- 
ture found in Exodus 20:22-23:33. This literary complex can 
be divided into four major units: Exodus 20:22-26, cultic or- 
dinances; 21:1-22:16, legal prescriptions; 22:17-23:19, religious, 
moral, and cultic instructions; and 23:20-33, epilogue or con- 
cluding section. The Book of the Covenant begins (20:22-26) 
and concludes (23:10-19) - immediately preceding the epi- 
logue - with instructions pertaining to correct ritual proce- 
dure. A cultic frame to a juridical corpus is also characteristic 
of two other biblical corpora, the so-called ^Holiness Code 
of Leviticus (iy:iff. and 26:1-2), and the laws of ^Deutero- 
nomy (i2:iff. and 26). The legal corpus proper, Exodus 
21:2-22:16, immediately follows the initial cultic prescrip- 
tions and contains civil and criminal legislation on the fol- 
lowing topics: 

Section 1: 21:2-6, Hebrew slave; 21:7-11, bondwoman; 
21:12-17, capital offense; 18-27, bodily injuries (including the 
laws of talion); 

Section 11, 21:28-32, goring ox; 

Section in, 21:33-36, pit and ox; 

Section iv, 21:37-22:3, theft and burglary; 22:4-5, grazing 



and burning; 22:6-14, deposits and bailees; 22:15-16, seduc- 
tion of an unbetrothed girl. 

In sections 1 and 11 human beings are the objects; in in 
and iv property is the object. Most of the individual laws are 
interrelated, moreover, by means of association and concat- 
enation of similar ideas, motifs, and key words. 

Similarity to Cuneiform Laws 

In both form and content many of these laws are indebted 
directly or indirectly to laws found in earlier cuneiform col- 
lections, i.e., Laws of Ur-Namma (lu) and Lipit-Ishtar (li), 
written in Sumerian; Laws of Eshnunna (le) and Laws of 
Hammurapi (lh), written in Akkadian; Middle Assyrian Laws 
(mal); and Hittite Laws (hl). (See ^Mesopotamia, Cuneiform 
Law.) The laws are formulated in the traditional casuistic 
style. The casuistic formulation of law, which predominates 
throughout all of the above-mentioned extra -biblical corpora, 
consists of a protasis, containing the statement of the case, and 
an apodosis, setting forth the solution, i.e., penalty. The prota- 
sis of the main clause is introduced by Hebrew ki, and of sub- 
ordinate or secondary clauses by Hebrew im or d (here mean- 
ing "if"). The only exceptions to the casuistic formulation in 
this section are the prescriptions found in Exodus 21:12, 15, 16, 
17, all of which begin (in Hebrew) with a participle. 

In content too, this earliest collection of biblical law re- 
mains to a great extent within the legal orbit of its cuneiform 
predecessors. Several possible extra-biblical substrata are still 
contextually and linguistically identifiable. The threefold basic 
maintenance requirement for a woman (Ex. 21:10) has ana- 
logues in li 27-28 and in legal documents from Ur in down 
to neo -Babylonian times. The equal division of all assets and 
liabilities between two owners when one ox gores another to 
death (Ex. 21:35-36) is identical to le 53. The laws of talion 
(punishment in kind; Ex. 21:23-25) are first legislated in lh 
196, 197, 200. The Bible, however, does not incorporate vicari- 
ous talion (but see Cassuto, Exodus, p. 277) as is the practice in 
lh 116, 210, 230, but does insist, on the other hand, on talion in 
cases of homicide (Ex. 21:23; according to lh 207, composition 
is acceptable). The laws of assault and battery (Ex. 21:18-19) 
are analogous to hl 10 in many respects. The laws pertaining 
to the seduction of an unbetrothed girl (Ex. 22:15-16) contain 
several features similar to mal a 56. The case of an injury to 
a pregnant woman which results in a miscarriage, or in her 
own death (Ex. 21:22-23), is dealt with in lh 209-214, mal a 
21, 50-52, hl 17-18, and in earlier Sumerian collections. An- 
other example of a common legal tradition that the biblical 
corpus shares with its Mesopotamian cogeners is the law of 
the goring ox (Ex. 21:28-32), in which there are several com- 
mon features: an official warning, a lack of precaution in spite 
of the warning, the fatal accident, and the punishment. 

Distinguishing Features 

Though the legal corpus of the Book of the Covenant emerges 
as an integral component of ancient Near Eastern law, there 
are still striking differences to be observed which are due not 
only to the different composition of the societies, but also to 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



67 



BOOK OF THE COVENANT 



the relative set of values within each society. Though slavery 
is a recognized institution within the Bible, the laws in the 
Book of the Covenant are concerned with the protection of the 
slave and the preservation of his human dignity: The status of 
the Hebrew slave is temporary (21:2), his physical being must 
be guarded against abuse, and he is considered a human be- 
ing in his own right and not merely his owner's chattel (21:20, 
26, 27). In several of the laws the females are given equal rank 
with their male counterparts (a mother, 21:15, 17; a daugh- 
ter, 21:31; a woman, 21:28, 29; and a female slave, 21:20, 26, 

27> 32). 

The laws of the goring ox best demonstrate the difference 

between cuneiform law and the Book of the Covenant, for the 
biblical version (Ex. 21:28-32) is the only one that preserves 
an inherent religious evaluation. The sole concern of the cor- 
responding cuneiform laws, le 54-55 and lh 250-252, is eco- 
nomic; hence, the victims family is compensated for its loss. 
The laws are not concerned with the liability of the ox. Only 
according to biblical law is the ox stoned, its flesh not to be 
eaten, and the execution of its owner demanded. The stoning 
of the ox and its taboo status are related in turn to the religious 
presupposition of bloodguilt (Gen. 9:5-6). A beast that kills a 
human being destroys the image of God, is held accountable 
for being objectively guilty of a criminal action, and hence is 
executed. Furthermore, biblical legislation ordinarily repudi- 
ates the concept of paying an indemnification to the family of 
the slain man. However, since this is a case of criminal negli- 
gence in which the ox alone is guilty of the killing, the owner 
may redeem his own life, if the slain persons family permits it, 
by paying a ransom (Ex. 21:30); in this case alone is a ransom 
acceptable; in other instances of homicide it is strictly forbid- 
den (Num. 35:31). Here, as well as in the other biblical corpora, 
the sacredness of human life is paramount. Hence, there is 
an absolute ban on composition (Ex. 21:22), for according to 
biblical law, life and property are incommensurable. Exodus 
21:31 adds another new element to the law by prohibiting the 
practice of vicarious talionic punishment (contrast lh 116, 210, 
230). The religious underpinning of this law reflects the unique 
characteristic of biblical law. Whereas in Mesopotamian le- 
gal corpora the gods may be credited with calling the king to 
establish justice and equity, it is the king who is the sole leg- 
islator. In the Bible, the law claims divine authorship. Indeed, 
from the Book of the Covenant one would never know that 
the states of ancient Israel were monarchies. Law is depicted 
as the expression of the will of a single God, who is the sole 
source and sanction of law, and all of life is ultimately bound 
up with this will. This explains why in the Book of the Cove- 
nant and in other biblical corpora, but not in cuneiform cor- 
pora, there is a blending of strictly legal with moral, ethical, 
and cultic ordinances (Ex. 22:17-23:19). 

The next section, Exodus 22:17-23:19, may be subdi- 
vided as follows: 22:17-19, laws against sorcery and bestiality; 
22:20-26, love and fellowship toward the poor and needy; 
22:27, reverence toward God and the leader of the commu- 



nity; 22:28-30, ritual prescriptions; 23:1-9, justice toward all; 
23:10-19, cultic calendar. 

This complex is distinguished by the use of the apodic- 
tic legal formulation. This formulation is stated as a direct ad- 
dress consisting of a command, whose validity is unlimited, 
and which obliges one to do, or refrain from doing, a certain 
action. The Bible uses the apodictic style to a much greater 
extent than do extra-biblical law corpora. This feature is due 
to the regular biblical setting of the laws as oral addesses to 
the people (see Greengus in Bibliography). Another feature 
of this section is the presence of motive clauses of an explan- 
atory, ethical, religious, or historical nature. For law in Israel 
also constitutes a body of teaching (torah), which is set forth 
publicly and prospectively to the entire community (Ex. 21:1; 
Deut. 31:9-13). 

The final section, the epilogue, Exodus 23:20-33, consists 
of two different paragraphs, verses 20-25 an d verses 26-33. 
It contains the promise of Gods presence and protection of 
Israel in the forthcoming conquest of Canaan as long as they 
remain faithful to His laws. Since several extra-biblical legal 
corpora (lu, li, lh) that conclude with epilogues also com- 
mence with prologues, the question has been raised whether 
a prologue can be found in the Book of the Covenant. It has 
been suggested that in light of the final redaction of the Book 
of Exodus, chapter 19:3-6 actually serves the function of a 
prologue by setting forth the prime purpose of biblical leg- 
islation, that of sanctification. Thus, Exodus 19:3-6 and Ex- 
odus 23:20-33 would form a literary frame that encases the 
new constitution of Israel and binds the history and destiny 
of Israel to the discipline of law. 

Date 

Various dates have been suggested for the compilation of the 
Book of the Covenant, ranging from the period of Moses to 
post-exilic times. The resort to parallels has often been deter- 
mined by a scholars presuppositions. Thus, the slave law in 
Exodus 21:2-6 has been explained as meeting the needs of de- 
faulting debtors in early Israelite society, and alternatively, as 
reflective of the redemption of Jewish slaves from gentiles in 
the Persian period described in the Book of Nehemiah (5:8). 
Similarly, the absence of references to the monarchy has been 
used to support either a pre-monarchic date or a post-monar- 
chic date. Likewise, the office of nasi, "* Chieftain" (22:7), is re- 
ferred to elsewhere in the Bible in both early and late settings. 
As a final complication, one must deal with the "boomerang 
phenomenon" (Zakovitch) in which a law in an early collec- 
tion was reinterpreted in a later one, the interpretation sub- 
sequently finding its way into the earlier collection once both 
collections found their way into the Tor ah. 

Some scholars would separate the question of the original 
date of compilation of the laws in the Book of the Covenant 
from that of its incorporation within the Torah. The monar- 
chic period suggests itself for the original date because of the 
close resemblance of its laws to the ancient Near Eastern laws, 



68 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOOK OF LIFE 



which were royal in origin. The absence of references to the 
monarchy would then be explained as the result of deletions 
from the Book of the Covenant when it was incorporated in 
the final redaction of the Pentateuch in post-exilic times. Plau- 
sible as this hypothesis is, it remains unproved. 

bibliography: M. Greenberg, in: Sefer Yovel Y. Kaufmann 
(i960), 5-28; H. Cazelles, Etudes sur le Code de I'Alliance (1946); U. 
Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (1967); M. Haran, 
in: em, 5 (1968), 1087-91 (incl. bibl.); S.M. Paul, Studies in the Book 
of the Covenant in the Light of Cuneiform and Biblical Law (1970); 
O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament, an Introduction (1965), 212-9 (incl. 
bibl.). add. bibliography: I. Mendelsohn, Slavery in the Ancient 
Near East... (1949); S. Greengus, idbsup (Interpreters Dictionary of 
the Bible Supplementary Volume), 532-37; M. Roth, Law Collections 
from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (1995); Y. Zakovitch, "Book of the 
Covenant," in: M. Fox et al. (eds.), Texts, Temples, and Traditions (in 
Hebrew; fs M. Haran, 1996), 59-64; M. Koeckert, in: C. Bultmann 
et al. (eds.), Vergegenwaertigung des Alten Testaments (fs R. Smend, 
2002), 13-27; J. van Seters, in: zaw, 108 (1996), 534-46; L. Schmidt, 
in: zaw, 113 (2001), 167-85; D. Knight, in: S. Olyan (ed.), A Wise and 
Discerning Heart (fs B. Long, 2002), 13-79. 

[Shalom M. Paul/S. David Sperling (2 nd ed.)] 

BOOK OF JASHAR (Heb. TO'n 1D0, Sefer ha-Yashar; "the 
upright [one]'s book"), one of the lost source books of early 
Israelite poetry from which the writers in the books of Joshua 
and Samuel excerpted Joshuas command to the sun and the 
moon in Joshua 10: i2b-i3a and Davids lament for Saul and 
Jonathan in 11 Sam. 1:19-27, as indicated by the accompanying 
citations. The command to the sun and moon is an archaic 
poetic unit embedded in the later prose narrative of the vic- 
tory against a five-king coalition and in defense of Gibeon, a 
covenant ally. The narrative provides a prosaic interpretation 
of the couplet, in keeping with the books presentation of the 
conquest as a divine miracle and not Israels victory. In itself 
the couplet reflects the early Israelite understanding of the 
Federations wars as sacral events, with God as commander 
in chief directing tactics through the agency of heavenly pow- 
ers who are conceived as members of the divine Sovereigns 
court (cf. how the stars "fought against Sisera" in Judg. 5:20). 
The lament for Saul and Jonathan is unquestionably a genu- 
ine literary attestation of Davids poetic talent and it helps to 
explain the later attribution of many biblical psalms to David. 
Probably a third excerpt from the Book of Jashar is found in 
1 Kings 8:12-13, a couplet embedded in Solomons prayer at 
the dedication of the Temple, which survives in fullest form 
in the septuagint version. In the latter, the couplet appears at 
the end of the prayer and is followed by a notation in verbatim 
agreement with the one of Joshua 10:13, directing the reader to 
the book of Shir ("Song"). It has been suggested that the latter 
may stem from an accidental metathesis of letters (syr for ysr), 
which is not uncommon among copyists' errors. See *Bookof 
the Wars of the Lord for another and possibly related anthol- 
ogy, tenth century and earlier, to which historians of Israel 
and Judah turned for such poetic excerpts. The Talmud (Av. 



Zar. 25a) homiletically identifies the Book of Jashar with the 
"book of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (i.e., Genesis), who were 
"upright." A quasi -historical work of the 13 th century bears the 
same title (see *Sefer ha-Yashar). 

bibliography: Thackeray, in: jts (1910), 518-32. 

[Robert G. Boling] 

BOOK OF LIFE, or perhaps more correctly BOOK OF THE 
LIVING (Heb. W*ri "IDD, Sefer Hayyim), a heavenly book in 
which the names of the righteous are inscribed. The expres- 
sion "Book of Life" appears only once in the Bible, in Psalms 
69: 29 (28), "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; 
let them not be enrolled among the righteous," but a close 
parallel is found in Isaiah 4:3, which speaks of a list of those 
destined (literally "written") for life in Jerusalem. The erasure 
of a sinners name from such a register is equivalent to death 
(cf. Ps. 69: 29, and the plea of Moses, Ex. 32:32-33). 

The belief in the existence of heavenly ledgers is alluded 
to several times in the Bible (Isa. 65:6; Jer. 17:1; 22:30; Mai. 3:16; 
Ps. 40:8; 87:6; 139:16; Job 13:26; Dan. 7:10; 12:1; Neh. 13:14 (?) - 
the exact meaning of some of these texts, along with 1 Samuel 
25:29, however, is still in doubt), the Apocrypha and Pseude- 
pigrapha (e.g., Jub. 30: 19-23; 1 En. 47:3; 8i:iff.; 97:6; 98:76°.; 
103:2; 104:7; 108:3, 7> ! Bar. 24:1), and the New Testament (e.g., 
Luke 10:20; Phil. 4:3; Heb. 12:23). This belief can be traced to 
Mesopotamia, where the gods were believed to possess tab- 
lets recording the deeds and destiny of men. Examples are 
the prayer of Ashurbanipal to Nabu, the divine scribe, "My 
life is inscribed before thee," and of Shamash-Shum-ukin, 
"May [Nabu] inscribe the days of his life for long duration on 
a tablet." The exact equivalent of the Hebrew Sefer Hayyim is 
found in a tablet from the neo- Assyrian period and may also 

be present in a Sumerian hymn. 

[Shalom M. Paul] 

In the Mishnah (Avot 3:17), R. Akiva speaks in detailed terms 
of the heavenly ledger in which all man's actions are written 
down until the inevitable day of reckoning comes. On the ba- 
sis of the above-mentioned reference to the Book of Life in 
Psalms, however, or, according to another amora y of the plea 
of Moses, the Talmud states "three books are opened in heaven 
on Rosh Ha-Shanah, one for the thoroughly wicked, one for 
the thoroughly righteous, and one for the intermediate. The 
thoroughly righteous are forthwith inscribed in the Book of 
Life, the thoroughly wicked in the Book of Death, while the 
fate of the intermediate is suspended until the Day of Atone- 
ment" (rh 16b). 

This passage has greatly influenced the whole concep- 
tion of the High Holidays and finds its expression in the lit- 
urgy and piyyutim of those days. Of the four special insertions 
in the *Amidah for the *Ten Days of Penitence, three of them 
are prayers for "Inscription in the Book of Life" and it is the 
basis of the moving prayer U-Netanneh Tokef. 

[Louis Isaac Rabinowitz] 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



69 



BOOK OF THE WARS OF THE LORD 



bibliography: Schrader, Keilinschr, 2 (19033), 400-6, E. 
Behrens (ed.), Assyrisch-Babylonische Briefe kultischen Inhalts aus der 
Sargonidenzeit (1906), 43; A. Jeremias, Babylonisches im Neuen Testa- 
ment (1905), 69-73; T.H. Gaster, Thespis (19612), 288-9; R-F Harper, 
Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, 6 (1902), let. 545, lines 9-10 (Eng. 
trans, in L. Waterman, Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire, 
1 (1930), 386-7); O. Eissfeldt, DerBeutel der Lebendigen (i960); N.H. 
Tur-Sinai, Peshuto shelMikra, 2 (1965), 180. add. bibliography: 
S. Paul, in: janes, 5 (=Gaster Festschrift; 1973), 345—53. 

BOOK OF THE WARS OF THE LORD (Heb. mrf??? 1DD 
mrp, Sefer Milhamot yhwh), book, mentioned only once in 
the Bible (Num. 21:14), which apparently contained an an- 
thology of poems describing the victories of the Lord over 
the enemies of Israel. The only extant piece contains a frag- 
mented geographical note which is very obscure. According 
to a tradition preserved in the Septuagint and in the Aramaic 
Targums the words "The Wars of the Lord" are the beginning 
of the poetic quotation and are not part of the name of "the 
Book." The book referred to then would be the To rah. How- 
ever, according to the Vulgate and medieval and modern ex- 
egetes, this is the complete title of a book which, like several 
other literary works, has not been preserved. 

The extent of the actual quotation from this book is de- 
bated. Some think it comprises only verse 14 itself, others in- 
clude verse 15 (jps), while still others go so far as to include 
verses 17-20 ("The Song of the Weir) and the poem in verses 
27-30. The existence of such a book indicates that early writ- 
ten as well as oral traditions have been incorporated within 
the Pentateuchal documents. The date of the work is variously 
assigned to the periods of the desert (Kaufmann), Joshua, or 
David (Mowinckel). 

bibliography: Mowinckel, in: zaw, 53 (1935), 130-52; 
Kaufmann Y., Toledot, 4 (1957), 33, 72; N.H. Tur-Sinai, Peshuto shel 
Mikra, 1 (1962), 167-9. 

[Shalom M. Paul] 

BOOKPLATES, labels, usually inside book covers, indicat- 
ing the owner of the books. The earliest ex libris with Hebrew 
wording were made for non-Jews. One of the first book- 
plates was made by Albrecht Duerer for Willibald Pirkheimer 
(c. 1504) with an inscription in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin of 
Psalms 111:10. Hector Pomer of Nuremberg had a woodcut ex 
libris (1525) that is attributed to Duerer or his disciple, Hans 
Sebald Beham, with the Hebrew translation of "Unto the pure 
all things are pure" (nt, Titus 1:15). "A time for everything" 
(Eccles. 3:1) in Hebrew is found on the bookplate (1530) by Bar- 
thel Beham, of Hieronymus Baumgartner of Nuremberg. 

Among the Jewish artists in England who engraved 
bookplates in the 18 th century were Benjamin Levi of Ports- 
mouth, Isaac Levi of Portsea, Moses Mordecai of London, 
Samuel Yates of Liverpool, and Mordecai Moses and Ezekiel 
Abraham Ezekiel of Exeter. However, they only made a few 
bookplates for Jews. The first known ex libris of a Jew was 
made by Benjamin Levi for Isaac Mendes of London in 1746. 
A number of British Jews in the 18 th and 19 th centuries had ar- 



morial bookplates bearing the family coat of arms, although 
some of them were spurious. Sir Moses Montefiore had sev- 
eral ex libris which bore his distinctively Jewish coat of arms. 
Among the few Jewish ex libris made in the latter half of the 
18 th century in Germany were those for David Friedlaender, 
engraved by Daniel N. Chodowiecki in 1774; and Bernhardt 
Friedlaender, by Johann M.S. Lowe in 1790. In the 18 th cen- 
tury Dutch members of the Polack (Polak) family were among 
the early bookplate artists. A.S. Polak engraved a heraldic ex 
libris for the Jewish baron Aerssen van Sommelsdyk. Isaac de 
Pinto, a Dutch Sephardi Jew, had a bookplate featuring a huge 
flower vase with his monogram. The modern Russian-Jewish 
artist S. Yudovin engraved a number of exquisite woodcut 
bookplates which are among the relatively few with Yiddish 
inscriptions. Among other European Jewish artists who have 
used various graphic media to execute ex libris are Uriel Birn- 
baum, Lodewijk Lopes Cardozo, Fre Cohen, Michel Fingesten, 
Alice Garman-Horodisch, Georg Jilovsky, Emil Orlik, and 
Hugo Steiner-Prag. Marco Birnholz (1885-1965) of Vienna, 
a foremost collector, had over 300 different ones for his own 
use that were made by many of the European Jewish graphic 
artists. Bookplates of three Jews are considered to be among 
the earliest American ex libris, dating from the first half of the 
19 th century. The pictorial bookplate of Barrak (Baruch) Hays 
of New York incorporated a family coat of arms. Benjamin S. 
Judah had two armorial bookplates, although there is no evi- 
dence that he was entitled to bear a coat of arms. Dr. Benja- 
min I. Raphael also had two ex libris - one showing a hand 
grasping a surgeons knife and the other a skull and bones, 
symbols frequently found on medical ex libris. Among the 
early American college bookplates that have Hebrew words 
are those of Yale University, inscribed with Urim ve-Thu- 
mim, Columbia with Ori El ("God is my light," alluding to 
Ps. 27:1), and Dartmouth with El Shaddai ("God Almighty"). 
Many of the major universities in the United States have a 
variety of bookplates for their Judaica collections. Ameri- 
can Jewish artists of bookplates include Joseph B. Abrahams, 
Joanne Bauer-Mayer, Todros Geller, A. Raymond Katz, Reu- 
ben Leaf, Solomon S. Levadi, Isaac Lichtenstein, Saul Raskin, 
and Ilya Schor. Ephraim Moses Lilien, the "father of Jewish 
bookplates," designed many for early Zionist leaders which 
revealed national suffering and hopes. He gave the Hebrew 
rendering of the Latin term ex libris - mi-sifrei ("from the 
books of") for the numerous ex libris, which he created with 
definitive Jewish significance, and inaugurated a new era in 
this field that was pursued by other Jewish artists. Hermann 
Struck drew inspiration from the monuments and landscape 
of Erez Israel for the ex libris he made. Joseph Budko created 
more than 50 bookplates in aquatints, woodcuts, etchings, and 
drawings, mostly in a purely ornamental style, leaning heav- 
ily on the decorative value of Hebrew script. His artistic ex li- 
bris are considered among the finest Jewish examples. Jakob 
Steinhardt also executed a number of bookplates. Among the 
other modern Israel artists who produced ex libris are Aryeh 
Allweil, David Davidowicz, Ze'ev Raban, J. Ross, Jacob Stark, 



70 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOOKS 



and Shelomo Yedidiah. Synagogues, Jewish community cen- 
ters, and institutions of Jewish learning have their own book- 
plates on which are imprinted names of the donors of books 
or names of deceased persons who are thus memorialized. 
Important collections of ex libris are at Hebrew Union Col- 
lege, Cincinnati, consisting mainly of the private collections 
of Israel Solomons and Philip Goodman, and at the Museum 
of the Printing Arts, Safed, based mainly on the private col- 
lection of Abraham Weiss of Tel Aviv. 

bibliography: P. Goodman, American Jewish Bookplates 
(1956), repr. from ajhsp, 45 (1955/56), 129-216; idem, in: jba, 12 
( 1 953 _ 55)> 77~9°'y Boekcier, 9 (Dutch, 1954), 21-26; American Society 
of Bookplate Collectors and Designers, Yearbook, 25 (1955), 14-25; 
National Union of Printing Workers in Israel, Katalog le-Taarukhat 
Tavei-Sefer Yehudiyim (1956); A. Rubens et al., Anglo-Jewish Notabili- 
ties... (1949); idem, in: jhset, 14 (1940), 91-129. 

[Philip Goodman] 

BOOKS. 

Production and Treatment 

The history of Hebrew bookmaking is as old as the history of 
the Jewish people and goes back for more than 3,000 years. 
It may be divided into three periods: from earliest times to 
the final editing of the Talmud (sixth or seventh centuries); 
from geonic times to the end of the 15 th century and the first 
printed Hebrew books; and from then to the present day. To 
the first period belong the books of the *Bible, the 'Apocry- 
pha, and the non-biblical texts found among the *Dead Sea 
Scrolls. Other books are mentioned in the Bible (cf. Eccles. 
12:12, "of making many books there is no end") and also in the 
Talmud, but it may be assumed that in the materials used, the 
writing techniques, and their format they were no different 
from books of the Bible. Toward the middle of the geonic pe- 
riod (ninth and tenth centuries) technical changes resulted 
from Arab influence and the growth of a European Diaspora 
and - more important still - from the common use of paper 
as writing material. The revolutionary impact of printing ush- 
ered in further developments. (This article will deal with the 
first period of Hebrew bookmaking; the second can be found 
under ^Manuscripts, and the last under ^Printing.) 

writing materials. For Bible period see ^Writing and 
Writing Materials. Papyrus is not mentioned in the Bible, 
though the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash speak of neyar, 
which probably was not made out of the expensive papyrus 
but from tree bark and similar material. Papyri have also been 
found in the Dead Sea caves, among them a palimpsest of an 
eighth century b.c.e. letter. For sacred purposes only animal 
skin could be used, either in the form of gevil ("uncut skin'), 
which was reserved for Torah scrolls, or kelaf ("split skin," 
parchment"), which could be used for other biblical books 
and had to be used for phylacteries, while 8vq %igtgc; ("hard 
to split"), an inferior kind of parchment, was to be used for 
mezuzot (Shab. 79b; Meg. 2:2, cf. Arist. 176). Later halakhah 
permitted any parchment for sacred purposes if written on the 
inside of the skin, while leather was used on the cleaned hair 



side. Skins used for writing were also distinguished according 
to the treatment they received: mazzah, hippah, diftera (Shab. 
79a). The use of Greek terms indicates the origin of the type 
of parchment or its method of manufacture. For sacred pur- 
poses only skins from ritually pure animals could be used (t j, 
Meg. 1:11, 7id; Shab. 108a, based on Ex. 13:9); deerskins were 
preferred (Ket, 103b; tj, Meg. ibid.). Wooden tablets covered 
with wax (pinkaSy DJ733, nivaQ> potsherds (ostraca), tree or 
plant leaves, and fishskins were for profane use only. 

scrolls. In antiquity all books, Jewish or non-Jewish, were 
scrolls. The Torah presented in the third century to Ptolemy 11 
(Philadelphus) of Egypt by the high priest from Jerusalem 
so that it might be translated into Greek (*Septuagint) was 
unrolled before him (Arist. 176-7; cf. I. Mace. 3:48; Rev. 5:1). 
One of the Torah scrolls kept in the Temple (tj, Taan. 4:2, 
68a) was carried through Rome among the spoils in the tri- 
umphal procession of Titus (Jos., Wars 7:5, 150, 162), but the 
theory that it is pictured on the Arch of Titus (T. Reinach, 
in re j 20, 1894) is not tenable. Talmud and Midrash speak 
mainly of scroll-books. The high priest on the Day of Atone- 
ment read from a scroll during the Temple service and then 
rolled it up (Yoma 7:1; Sot. 7:7), as was done after each reading 
of the Law. This was an honor reserved for the leader of the 
congregation (Meg. 32a). If a man received a Torah scroll in 
deposit, he had to roll it open for airing once a year (bm 29b). 
A Torah scroll was rolled from both ends toward the middle, 
each end being attached to a cylindrical handle called ammud 
("pillar," bb 14a) or, in later times, ez hayyim ("tree of life"), 
enough parchment being left clear of writing for wrapping 
round the handle. Other scrolls had only one handle on the 
right end, while on the left enough parchment was left vacant 
for wrapping the whole scroll (bb 13b). In the Septuagint the 
word megillah is translated by Ke9aXic, ("head-piece"), refer- 
ring to the handle, which thus is used to stand for the whole 
scroll (Ezek. 2:9; 3:1-3; Ps. 40:8). This shows that the handles 
were already in use in the last centuries b.c.e. 

In any event, there is no reference in either biblical or tal- 
mudic literature to books in the form of codices with folded 
pages, unless the pinkas, which could have as many as 24 tab- 
lets (Lam. R. 1:14), should be regarded as its precursor. The 
term tomos ("volume," from Greek and Latin) is used in the 
Tosefta (Shab. 13:4; bk 9:31) for which there is a Hebrew syn- 
onym takhrikh (bm 1:8); but it is not clear whether some sort 
of codex is meant or the traditional scroll, made of sheets sewn 
together. * Jerome (fourth century), who speaks of Hebrew 
Bibles in the possession of Christians, does not mention any 
Hebrew codex. However, by the fifth century most books, like 
the earliest Christian ones, are codices. Passages in such late 
talmudic works as Soferim (3:6; cf. ed. Mueller, 46-47) and in 
the minor tractate Sefer Torah (1:2) have been interpreted as 
referring to codices (Blau, in Magyar Zsido Szemle 21, 1904, 
284-8; idem, Sul libro, 38-45). 

single and combined scrolls. Biblical books certainly 
remained in scroll form, and those used in the synagogue 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



71 



BOOKS 



have preserved this format. For liturgical use the five books 
of the Pentateuch had to be written on one single scroll (Git. 
6oa). According to one tradition, the Torah consisted of seven 
scrolls, with a division of Numbers at chapter 10:35-36, these 
two verses making a separate book (Shab. H5b-n6a; Lev. R. 
11:3; Yad. 3:5). The division of books of the Bible was largely 
determined by the size of the scroll. Samuel and Kings were 
probably originally one book but were divided and subdivided 
for size. The Book of Psalms too was divided into five books at 
an early date. Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles were originally 
one book, as suggested by the identity of the last two verses 
of Chronicles with the first two of Ezra-Nehemiah. Smaller 
books, such as the two parts of Isaiah and of Zechariah, were 
combined into one scroll. The fact that the *Minor Prophets 
were called the Twelve Prophets as early as Ben Sira 49:10 
(third-second centuries b.c.e.) proves both their separate and 
combined entity (see also ^Hebrew Book Titles). 

Talmudic sources reflect the existence of scrolls contain- 
ing both single and combined books of the Bible. Single books 
(Psalms, Job, Proverbs), though much worn, maybe given to 
a widow in payment or part payment of her marriage settle- 
ment (Git. 35a). The combination of single books into Penta- 
teuch, Prophets, and Hagiographa respectively is discussed as 
a halakhic problem. Whether those three could be combined 
or written in one scroll - at least for liturgical use - was con- 
troversial, but the halakhah was decided in the affirmative (bb 
13b; tj, Meg. 3:1, 73d~74a; cf. tj, Yoma 6:1, 44a). According to 
one opinion Baitos (Boethos) b. Zonin had the eight prophetic 
books fastened together with the approval of Eleazar b. Aza- 
riah; while Judah ha-Nasi reports that his courts approval was 
given for a complete Bible in this form (bb 13b). Heirs who 
had inherited biblical books were not allowed to divide be- 
tween them a single scroll, but could do so if they were sepa- 
rate ones (ibid.). The five books: Song of Songs, Ruth, Lam- 
entations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther (see the Five ^Scrolls) are 
called megillot (scrolls), the last one known as "the megillah" 
in Mishnah and Talmud, because it had to be read publicly 
from a parchment scroll (Meg. 2:2). Like the Sefer Torah, the 
Scroll of Esther retains the scroll form today. At a later stage 
the custom arose - and is still current - of reading the other 
four megillot on special occasions, in some communities also 
from scrolls. 

non-biblical books. For special purposes excerpts from 
the biblical books were written in separate scrolls or on one 
or more sheets (pinkas). The most important example is the 
Sefer Aftarta, the collection of weekly prophetic readings (Git. 
60a, see *Haftarah) which in some communities is still used 
today. In the same talmudic passage the use of Sifrei Agga- 
deta ("homiletical books") is mentioned as well as the ques- 
tion whether megillot, meaning excerpts from the Pentateuch, 
could be written for teaching purposes. Though the conclu- 
sion is negative, it was the practice to copy the *Shema and 
the *Hallel psalms for this purpose (Tosef., Yad. 2:11). Accord- 
ing to Numbers 5:23, the curses against the woman suspected 



of adultery had to be written on a scroll (sefer), and the writ- 
ing dissolved in water for her to drink. This scroll was called 
Megillot Sotah (Sot. 2:3-4; tb, i7a-i8a), for which Queen 
*Helena of Adiabene presented to the Temple a master copy 
inscribed on a golden tablet (Yoma 3:10). Genealogical tables 
current in Temple and talmudic times were called megillot 
or Sefer Yuhasin (Yev. 4:13; 49a-b; Mid. 5:4; Pes. 62b, Gen. R. 
98:7), and these are also mentioned by Josephus (Life 6; Ap- 
ion 1:7; see also ^Archives). The Mishnah mentions heretical 
books under the collective name of Sefarim Hizonim (i.e., "ex- 
ternal books"; Sanh. 10:1), and this has been variously inter- 
preted in Talmud and Midrash (Sanh. 100b and Alfasi ibid.; 
tj, Sanh. 10:1, 28a; Eccl. R. 12:12 no. 7). Similar books were 
found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. These discoveries, the 
oldest Hebrew (or Aramaic) manuscripts in existence - some 
belonging to the second century b.c.e. - have considerably 
increased knowledge of this field. Besides manuscripts writ- 
ten on parchment, leather, or papyrus, a *copper scroll was 
found, on which a Hebrew text is engraved. Y. Yadin (Megillot 
Milhemet... (1958), 107-8) found that the Dead Sea Scrolls 
generally conform to the talmudic rules for the writing of sa- 
cred scrolls. Though the writing down of the Oral Law was 
strictly forbidden, this was circumvented by the notes taken 
down on so-called megillot setarim, i.e., private notebooks or 
such as the Sifrei Aggadet a (Shab. 6b; bm 92a; Maas. 2:4, 49d; 
Shab. 156a; Kil. 1:1, 27a). 

size of books. From the description in the Mishnah of the 
reading from the Torah by the high priest on the Day of Atone- 
ment (Yoma 7:1) and by the king on the occasion of *Hakhel 
(Sot. 7:8), this Temple scroll cannot have been unduly large. 
The measurements mentioned in the Talmud are 6 by 6 hand- 
breadths (44 x 44 cm.) and the scroll was to be of equal height 
and width - but this was admittedly difficult to achieve (bb 
14a). The script had to be correspondingly small - the Torah 
alone consists of over 300,000 letters. Jerome (Prologium ad 
Ezeckielem, 20) complained that the Hebrew Bible text could 
hardly be read by daylight, let alone by the light of a lamp, but 
diminutive script was widely used in antiquity, and Jews were 
familiar with the Bible from childhood. 

details in use of parchment. Usually only one side of 
the writing material was used. In the Talmud the column is 
called daf ("board") , which is still used today for the double 
folio of the Talmud, the term for the single page being am- 
mud ("pillar"), the common word for page in modern Hebrew, 
as distinct from ammudah for the half-page column. For the 
writing of Torah and other liturgical scrolls detailed instruc- 
tions regulate height and width, space to be left between, over, 
and below the columns, as well as between lines, words, and 
letters. There are rules for the spacing between the various 
books of the Pentateuch and of the Prophets, and specific in- 
structions on how many columns a single parchment sheet 
(yeriah) should be divided into, how many letters should be 
accommodated in one line (27), and how many lines in one 
column (Men. 3oa-b; tj, Meg. 1:11, 7ic-d, Sh. Ar., yd 271-8). 



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Poetical passages in the Bible such as the Songs of Moses (Ex. 
15; Deut. 32:1-43) and of Deborah (Judg. 5), 11 Samuel 22, and 
some lists, such as Joshua 12 and Esther 9:7-10, had to be writ- 
ten in special form of "bricks and half-bricks > ' (Meg. 16b). The 
ruling of the parchment - which had to be done with an in- 
strument but not with ink or color - was required for sacred 
texts (Meg. 18b; Men. 32b) but was general practice as well 
(see Git. 7a). 

writing instruments. In talmudic times the makhtev 
(Avot 5:6; Pes. 54a; tj Taan. 4:8, 69a) was used, which cor- 
responds to the Greek ypctqnou and the Latin graphium. It 
had one sharp pointed end for writing and one broad end 
for erasing (Kel. 13:2). For writing on parchment or paper the 
kolmos (k&Xcxuoc,) made of reed was more suitable. The He- 
brew word for ink (deyo) occurs as early as Jeremiah 36:18; 
this was black Indian ink usually made of lampblack and gum 
to which occasionally an iron compound was added. Other 
writing liquids are mentioned in the Talmud, such as komos 
(kouui, commis), acacia resin, or gum arabic; met afazim, the 
juice of gallnuts (Shab. 104b; Git 19a), whose use in writing 
Torah scrolls became a matter of controversy in the Middle 
Ages; and kalkantum (x&Xkciutoc,), copper vitriol, also used 
as an admixture for Indian ink. For the rabbis the important 
consideration for sanctioning the use of one ink in preference 
to another was durability (Shab. 12:5; Git. 2:3). According to 
the Letter of *Aristeas the Torah scroll presented to Ptolemy 
Philadelphus and the Torah scrolls used by Alexandrian Jews 
(in Jerusalem?) had letters written in gold; the rabbis frowned 
on such ostentation and prohibited it for liturgical use (Shab. 
103b; Sof. 1:9; cf. Song R. 1:11). Chrysography was of great an- 
tiquity: papyri with gold script of the Twenty- Second Egyp- 
tian Dynasty are in the Gizeh museum. Jerome and Chrysos- 
tom - like many rabbis before them - criticize the custom of 
writing Bibles on purple parchment with gold script and the 
use of precious stones. In his writing kit the scribe had, beside 
other auxiliary tools, an inkwell (biblical keset ha-sofer, Ezra 
9:3), talmudic beit deyo (Tosef, bm 4:11), or kalamarin (Kel. 
2:7). Examples of such (Roman type) inkwells were discov- 
ered in the ruins of *Qumran, some of them with remnants 
of a carbon ink still in them. They belonged to the equipment 
of a special Scriptorium, a writing room for the scribes of the 
Qumran sect. Such an inkwell was also found in excavations 
in the Old City of Jerusalem. 

keeping of books. Scrolls, being valuable, were kept with 
care. Sacred books had to be wrapped in mitpahot (sing. 
mitpahat; Shab 9:6), and it was forbidden to touch them with 
bare hands (Shab. 14a; 133b; Meg. 32a; cf. 11 Cor. 3:14-16). The 
wraps were made of linen, silk, purple materials, or leather. To- 
day's Torah mantle (see * Torah ornaments) has a long history. 
Some Dead Sea Scrolls were found preserved in linen wrap- 
pings. Books were kept in chests, alone or with other things; 
the synagogue *Ark is a survivor of these chests. Earthenware 
jars were also used as receptacles for books from Bible times 
(Jer. 32: 14). These have preserved for posterity the treasures 



of the Dead Sea caves, the ^Elephantine Letters, etc. Baskets 
too were used for keeping books (Meg. 26b). 

genizah. Worn sacred books had to be reverently "hidden 
away" - in a *genizah - and were eventually buried (Shab. 
16:1; Meg. 26b). This accounts for the fact that so few Torah 
or Bible fragments have been preserved from antiquity, as 
parchment, let alone papyrus, decays in the ground. Where 
the genizah was limited to storing away, it made possible such 
treasure troves as those from the Dead Sea caves and the Cairo 
* Genizah. Heretical books too were condemned to genizah y 
and these included almost anything not admitted to the *Bible 
canon (Shab. 30b; 115a; Pes. 56a). 

ownership of books. While books were costly and rare in 
antiquity, by the second century b.c.e. some Jews possessed 
their own copies of biblical books. During the persecution 
preceding the Hasmonean revolt, those caught possessing 
sacred books were burned with them (1 Mace. 1:56-57; 3:48; 
11 Mace. 2:14-15; cf. *Haninah b. Teradyons martyrdom, Av. 
Zar. 18a). On the Day of Atonement the burghers of Jerusalem 
could each produce their Sefer Torah for the admiration of 
all (Yoma 70a). True wealth was books, and it was charity to 
loan them out (Ket. 50a on Ps. 112:3). Special laws applied to 
the finding, borrowing, and depositing of books (bm 2:8; bm 
29b), whether and under what circumstances it was permit- 
ted to sell them (Meg. 27a; see *Book Trade), and the provoc- 
ative query whether a room filled with books requires a me- 
zuzah at its door. This latter question is put into the mouth 
of Korah (tj, Sanh. 10:1, 27d). Sacred books were above all 
owned by municipalities and synagogues (Ned. 5:5; Meg. 3:1). 
Schoolchildren, too, usually had their own books (Deut. R. 
8; tj, Ta'an. 4:8, 69a). Mention is also made of books being 
written and owned by gentiles, heretics, and Samaritans (Git. 
4:6; 45a-b; Men. 42b). 

Bindings 

Bookbindings as such first made their appearance toward the 
end of the fourth century. Sheaves of pages (pen manuscript) 
were fastened together by means of two covers and a back, 
and then tied with strings. The early bookbindings from the 
Cairo Genizah were made of parchment with laces sewn on 
for fastening. Yemenite Jews used similar bindings down to a 
relatively recent date. These early bindings are without orna- 
mentation. Sometimes parchment or leather ends were left for 
carrying the book from place to place, and on these ends the 
name of the copyist or owner occasionally appears. 

middle ages. In the later Middle Ages examples of Islamic 
bookbinding arrived in Europe byway of Venice, bookbinders 
apparently also migrating from Byzantium; these specimens 
were remarkable primarily for their gold decoration. At about 
the same time goat-skin binding appeared; formerly it was 
considered a secret of the Islamic artisans. This led to smaller 
and lighter bindings. Colored bindings also originated in Is- 
lamic countries, and some beautiful examples have survived. 
Documents from the Cairo Genizah reveal that ready-made 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



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leather book covers were imported from Europe into Egypt 
for decoration. A i2 th -century list of books speaks of their 
red, black, and white covers (S.D. Goitein, Mediterranean So- 
ciety y 1 (1967), 112). 

The bindings of ancient and heavy parchment volumes 
were generally not decorated but received "blind-stamping" 
or gilding only. In the decoration of bindings by Jews the in- 
fluence of the environment is usually recognizable: that of 
Islamic countries and Byzantium and that of Christian mo- 
nastic bookbinders at a later date, in the early and late Mid- 
dle Ages respectively. The bindings reveal the period of their 
manufacture, and some book collections were arranged ac- 
cording to the style or origin of the bindings. The i3 th -century 
Sefer Hasidim (no. 345) advocates binding good books with 
handsome bindings. It also mentions a case of a Jew learning 
the craft from a monk, and considers whether to have sacred 
books bound by a Jew or by a monk, who was the better binder 
(no. 280). Medieval responsa literature reveals occasional ref- 
erences to bookbinding. 

Particular care was bestowed upon the bindings of com- 
munal prayer books (e.g., the Worms Mahzor of 1272) and 
*Memorbuch, of which some magnificent examples have been 
preserved, though the date of the bindings is often uncertain. 
Many communities disposed of special funds to pay for the 
binding or repairing of books in communal ownership. 

Until the 17 th century, binders prepared book covers by 
pasting together paper pages, often using old ^manuscripts, 
cutting them and pasting them together until they achieved 
the desired thickness (cf. Rashba, Resp. no. 166). Christian 
binders sometimes used Jewish manuscripts for this purpose, 
particularly when anti-Jewish riots and the looting of libraries 
had provided them with the necessary materials. Remnants of 
valuable manuscripts and ^Incunabula have been discovered 
in such bindings. Books belonging to synagogues or acade- 
mies had to be carefully guarded and would be attached by 
iron chains to the table or the shelves in the library. 

medieval bookbinders. In the 14 th century the official 
bookbinders at the papal court at Avignon were frequently 
Jews. Cases are recorded of Jews being commissioned to ex- 
ecute the bindings of a missal or a codex of Canon Law to be 
presented to a friend or relative of the pope. A certain Meir 
(Makhir) Solomo made artistic bindings for the royal treasury 
in Aragon (1367-89). From the *bull of the antipope Bene- 
dict xiii of 1415, prohibiting Jews from, among other things, 
binding books in which the names of Jesus or Mary occur, it is 
evident how important a role Jews played in the craft. On the 
back of a leather-bound copy of the Perpignan Bible (written 
in 1299), a calendar was engraved in niello-work about 1470 in 
honor of the owners, the Kalonymos family (see M. Narkiss, 
in Memorial Volume... Sally Meyer (1956), 180). 

The most prominent name in this field in the 15 th cen- 
tury was that of Meir *Jaffe of Ulm, who belonged to a fam- 
ily of Franconian artisans. Apart from bookbinding, he was 
also well-known as a manuscript copyist; 15 of his bindings 



have so far been found (in the libraries of London, Munich, 
Nuremberg, and Ansbach). He was the master of a special art 
called cuir cisele. The artist decorated the book covers by cut- 
ting ornaments and figures into the moist leather and then, 
by various methods, raising them into relief. This old-estab- 
lished craft reached its peak in the gothic style of i4 th -i5 th -cen- 
tury Germany. Though it may not have been a Jewish inven- 
tion, Jews became the supreme practitioners of this method, 
which became known therefore as "Jewish leather cutting." 
One of the special features of these bindings of Hebrew books 
is grotesques, though the genre is found elsewhere in gothic 
art. Jewish artists preferred "leather-cutting" to the more fre- 
quent, simpler, and cheaper method of "blind-stamping." 
The wandering Jewish artisan, traveling light by necessity, 
also may have found the chiseling knife easier to carry than 
the heavy dies. 

Jaffe was responsible for the binding - executed in 1468 - 
of a manuscript Pentateuch (Munich State Library, Cod. Hebr. 
212) belonging to the city of Nuremberg. In return the city 
council gave him permission to stay in the city for several 
months and follow his calling. This in itself is eloquent tes- 
timony to his eminence as a binder (he is called "a supreme 
artist"), as he must have evoked envy and opposition from the 
local craftsmen. Though the names of binders rarely appear 
on medieval books, Jaffe embossed this Bible with the Hebrew 
inscription: T>X&n TKtt 'ITttf KpTMTJB TWyh HTH ttfttinn. "This 
Pentateuch belongs to the Council of Nuremberg, may they 
live [long] - Meir [Jaffe], the artist." On another of his works 
(c. 1470) Jaffe, using calfskin on wooden boards, portrays a 
scholar on a high chair scanning a book placed before him on 
a pedestal. The rim of the binding is decorated with flowers. 
Two metal claps are engraved with the letter M in Gothic type, 
probably being Meirs initial. In 1490 the city of Noerdlingen 
(Wuerttemberg) made payment to a Jew for binding the Stadt- 
buch. It may well have been Meir Jaffe. 

With the invention of printing in the 15 th century and 
the proliferation of books more Jewish bookbinders are found 
all over Europe. In Poland, during the reign of Sigismund in 
(1587-1632), Jewish craftsmen were employed by church and 
state (see M. Kramer, in: Zion, 2 (1937), 317). In Italy, in the 
17 th and 18 th centuries, Bibles or prayer books were bound in 
silver, lavishly decorated, to serve as bridal presents (sivlonot), 
sometimes bearing a representation of a biblical scene relating 
to the brides or bridegrooms name, or the coats-of-arms of 
the two families. The art of filigree binding arose in Italy and 
France in the 17 th century and spread to other European coun- 
tries. At the same time embroidered or tortoiseshell bindings, 
though not characteristically Jewish, made their appearance in 
Holland and Germany, from where they spread eastward. Jews 
bound their ritualia, particularly bridal prayer books, in these 
beautiful materials. On these bindings metal, usually silver, is 
used for clasps and corners, and both are often finely engraved 
and decorated with emblems, monograms, or animal figures 
representing certain Jewish virtues. These ornately bound 
books are sometimes inlaid with precious stones and even 



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ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOOKS 



miniature drawings of the woman to whom they were pre- 
sented. Similarly bound and decorated books figured as pre- 
sentations by communities, societies, or wealthy individuals 
to Jewish or non- Jewish notables on special occasions: a rabbi 
or communal leader's jubilee, a sovereigns visit, or as a sign of 
appreciation for favors bestowed or assistance given. 

modern times. From the 19 th century onward, with grow- 
ing prosperity particularly among Western Jewry, the art of 
binding Hebrew or Jewish books developed. In Erez Israel, 
the establishment of the *Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts 
in Jerusalem in 1906 included a deliberate effort to develop 
a specifically Jewish style in bookbinding. This produced ol- 
ive-wood covers for a variety of books. Yemenite artisans too 
brought with them a tradition of bindings made from leather, 
silver, and gold filigree, and their productions have retained 
their popularity. There is, however, a more artistic and less 
traditional trend which has produced some magnificent 
bindings, such as that of the Golden Book and the Barmitz- 
vah Book at the head office of the Jewish National Fund in 
Jerusalem. 

[B. Mordechai Ansbacher] 

Book Illustrations 

In the early days of printing the illustrations were far inferior 
to those in contemporary ^illuminated manuscripts. European 
printing as a whole was preceded by block books, in which 
the text was subordinate to the illustrations. Hence, the illus- 
trated book existed from the very beginning of printing. In 
early Hebrew printing nothing of the sort is known; but the 
very nature of the illustrated book subjected it to more wear 
than ordinary volumes, and it may well be that some early il- 
lustrated works have been thumbed out of existence. There 
are indeed some surviving wood-blocks showing Passover 
scenes which were probably printed in Venice c. 1480. These 
may have been prepared for the illustration of a Hebrew work. 
The earliest Hebrew printed books, however, while - like other 
books - leaving a space for illuminated words or letters to be 
inserted by hand, relied for their decorative effect entirely on 
the disposition of the type, which was sometimes ornamented. 
Such is the case with the Turim of Pieve di Sacco (1475), the 
second (dated) Hebrew book to be completed in type. 

decorative borders. It was only at a slightly later period 
that, in imitation of the more sophisticated (but not fully il- 
luminated) manuscripts of the period, decorative borders 
began to be used for the opening - there were no title pages 
yet - and occasionally also for some of the more significant 
later pages. 

The first Hebrew book to make use of a border was the 
Pentateuch printed at Hijar in Spain about i486. The border, 
however, designed by Alonso Fernandez de *Cordoba, was not 
on the opening page but appeared as a decoration to the Song 
of Moses (Ex. 15), as in some Spanish Hebrew Bible manu- 
scripts. This border is outstanding with its beautiful traceries 
and charming animal figures. It appeared later in the Manuale 



Saragossanum, one of the great monuments of early Spanish 
printing, in which Cordoba and the Jewish printer Solomon 
Zalmati had collaborated. The border around the first page of 
the Turirriy printed by Samuel d'Ortas at Leiria in Portugal in 
1495, is of particular interest. This, presumably cut by a Jew- 
ish artist and incorporating Hebrew letters, elaborates on the 
similes in the opening passage of the work. About the same 
time, the Soncino family in Italy were making use of elegant 
black-and-white borders borrowed from non-Jewish sources. 
In some cases, in order to comply with the requirements 
of a Hebrew book, where the opening page needed to have 
the wider margin on the right rather than on the left, they 
sometimes broke up the border and in rare cases even had it 
recur to adjust to the requirements of Hebrew printing. The 
border used in Bahyas commentary on the Bible (Ezriel Gun- 
zenhausen, Naples, 1492) appears to have been designed and 
cut by the Hebrew printers brother-in-law, Moses b. Isaac. 
This border also appears in the Italian work LAquila Volante y 
produced there at about the same time by Aiolfo de* Cantoni. 
Many of these borders were transferred from press to press, 
or taken by the refugees from country to country. Thus the 
Hijar border referred to above appears in Lisbon in 1489, and 
later, increasingly worn and indistinct, in various works pro- 
duced in Turkey between 1505 and 1509. The Naples border 
was used in Constantinople in 1531/32. There are some su- 
perbly designed borders around some pages of the Prague 
Haggadah of 1526. For the Mantua editions of 1550 and 1560 
these were entirely recut, as framework around the identical 
text. With the development of the engraved title page in the 
16 th century, the use of borders became an exceptional luxury, 
as in some of the royal publications of the Mantuan press in 
the 18 th century. 

engraved title pages. It is only in 1505 that the first ti- 
tle page appears in a Hebrew book. Thereafter, these also re- 
ceived special care, later being enclosed within an engraved 
border in the form of a gate (hence the common Hebrew term 
for title page, sha'ar, "gate"), often flanked by twisted columns 
and later and not infrequently by figures of Moses and Aaron. 
In due course specially executed vignettes of biblical scenes 
or Jewish ritual observances were incorporated in these title 
pages. Printers' marks, first introduced in 1485 in Spain, be- 
came common from the 16 th century. 

illustrated works. Illustrations in the conventional sense 
first figure in a Hebrew book, so far as is known, in 1491, when 
the Brescia edition of the fable-book Mashal ha-Kadmoni by 
Isaac ibn *Sahula contained a number of cuts illustrating the 
various fables (repeated in the Barco edition of 1497/98). After 
this, it was customary to add illustrations to most books of fa- 
bles, for example the Yiddish Kuhbuch (Frankfurt, 1687). The 
prayers for rain and dew recited on the feasts of Tabernacles 
and Passover were often accompanied in Ashkenazi prayer 
books with the signs of the Zodiac, which, however, first ap- 
pear in a far from religious work, the frivolous Mahberot Im- 
manuel by Immanuel of *Rome (Brescia, 1491). 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



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minhagim books. Another favorite medium for book illus- 
tration was the books of customs or occasional prayers known 
as * minhagim books, also following a tradition that goes back 
to the days of manuscript illustration. The Birkat ha-Mazon 
(Prague, 1514) contains a few woodcuts illustrating the text 
which are similar to those produced in later Haggadot. At the 
turn of the century, in 1593 and 1601, two minhagim books 
were produced in Italy, lavishly illustrated with woodcuts de- 
picting almost every stage of and event in the Jewish religious 
year. The later work is the more delicate and its illustrations 
seem to reflect faithfully the realia of Italian Jewish life of the 
period. The earlier one, published possibly for export, is more 
northern European in character, and perhaps for that reason 
became more popular. These illustrations were constantly re- 
produced in similar German and Dutch publications down to 
the middle of the 18 th century. 

passover haggadot. The most popular subject for illumi- 
nation among Hebrew manuscripts was the Passover *Hag- 
gadahy and this tradition naturally continued in the age of 
printing. The earliest known example of this is in some frag- 
ments conjecturally ascribed to Turkey (but obviously printed 
by Spanish exiles) c. 1515. But the oldest dated illustrated 
Haggadah now extant is that of Prague of 1526, published by 
Gershon Kohen and his brother Gronem and apparently il- 
lustrated in part by their brother-in-law Hayyim Schwarz or 
Shahor. This lovely production is one of the most memorable 
specimens of the i6 th -century Hebrew press, the three fully 
decorated pages being especially noteworthy. It was exactly 
copied so far as the text was concerned but with fresh borders 
in the Mantua Haggadah of 1560, much improved in the sub- 
sequent edition of 1568. After some further experiments, an 
entirely fresh and more amply illustrated edition of the work 
was published by Israel Zifroni in Venice in 1609. This con- 
tinued to be republished with few changes until late in the 18 th 
century and served as the model for the Haggadot produced 
in the Mediterranean basin (e.g., at Leghorn) down to recent 
times. In 1695, the Venetian Haggadah served as the model for 
the edition published in Amsterdam with copper-plate illus- 
trations by the convert to Judaism who called himself ^Abra- 
ham b. Jacob. Though the general arrangement of the work 
and the choice of subjects was strongly influenced by the Ve- 
netian edition, the artist based his art to a great extent on il- 
lustrations to the Bible and other imaginative details gathered 
from the publications of Matthew Merian of Basle. The work 
reappeared with minor changes a few years later (Amsterdam, 
1699) and served as the model for a large number of editions 
produced in central Europe throughout the 18 th century and 
after. The actual illustrations, much deteriorated, continue to 
be reprinted or copied in popular editions down to the pres- 
ent day. Of the some 3,000 editions of the Passover Hagga- 
dah which are recorded, over 300 are illustrated. In recent 
years, artists of great reputation (Arthur *Szyk, Ben *Shahn, 
etc.) have collaborated in or produced illustrated editions of 
this favorite work. 



other works. Other Hebrew works which were tradition- 
ally enriched with illustrations - in most cases very crude - 
included the Yiddish pseudo-Josephus (*Josippon), from the 
Zurich edition of 1547 onward; and the women's compendium 
of biblical history, *Ze'enah u-Reenah, in numerous Dutch and 
German editions of the 17 th and 18 th centuries. On the other 
hand, for obvious reasons, the Hebrew Bible was never illus- 
trated until a few experiments appeared in the second half of 
the 19 th century. 

portraits. Portraits of an author occasionally appear in 
Hebrew books printed in Holland and Italy in the 17 th and 
18 th centuries; for example, Joseph Solomon del Medigo in his 
Sefer Elim (Amsterdam, 1629) and Moses Hefez (Gentili) in 
his Melekhet Mahashevet (Venice, 1701). The Kehunnat Avra- 
ham by Abraham ha-Kohen of Zante (Venice, 1719) has, after 
the elaborately engraved title page, a portrait which seems 
to be by the author himself. A portrait of the rabbi Solomon 
*Hirschel surprisingly accompanied the London prayer book 
edition of 1809. Judah Leon *Templos works on the Taberna- 
cle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon (1650 etc.) included 

fine illustrative engravings. 

[Cecil Roth] 

bibliography: Production: L. Loew, Graphische Requisiten 
und Erzeugnisse bei den Juden, 2 vols. (1870-71); M. Steinschneider, 
Vorlesungen ueber die Kunde der hebraeischen Manuskripte (1937 2 ); 
L. Blau, Das althebraeische Buchwesen (1902); idem, in: Festschrift A. 
Berliner (1903), 41-49; idem, Papyri und Talmud in gegenseitiger Be- 
leuchtung (1913); idem, in: Soncino-Blaetter, 1 (1025/26), 16-28; Krauss, 
Tal Arch, 3 (1912) 131-98; H. Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and 
Midrash (1959 6 ), 12-20 and notes; S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish 
Palestine (1950), 84-88, 203-8; Beit Arie, in: ks, 43 (1967/68), 4iifF.; 
M. Martin, Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2 vols. (1958); 
G.R. Driver, Judaean Scrolls (1965), 403-10. bindings; M. Steinsch- 
neider, op. cit., 33-35; Husung, in: Soncino-Blaetter, 1 (1925/26), 29-43 
and 3 pis.; Kurz, in: Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, 24 
(1965), 3-11, two facsimiles; C. Roth, in: Jewish Art (1961), 350, 503-4; 
idem, Jews in Renaissance (1959), 201-2. illustrations: C. Roth, 
in: Bodleian Library Record, 4 (1952-53), 295-303; A. Marx, Studies 
in Jewish History and Booklore (1944), 289-300. 

BOOKS OF THE CHRONICLES OF THE KINGS OF 
JUDAH AND ISRAEL, two sets of royal annals, mentioned 
in 1 and 11 Kings but subsequently lost. The historian of Kings 
refers to these works as his source, where additional infor- 
mation may be found. These references show how the histo- 
rian of Kings used extensive sources selectively. The books 
are referred to by this formula, with slight variations: "Now 
the rest of the acts of [the king], and all that he did, behold, 
they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of 
Judah/Israel." Frequently references are made to "his might," 
or "how we warred," and occasionally more specific deeds are 
mentioned (e.g., 1 Kings 15:23; 11 Kings 20:20). 

The Israelite annals are mentioned 18 times (1 Kings 14:19 
(17); 15:31; 16:5; et al.) and the Judean annals 15 times (1 Kings 
14:29; 15:7, 23; et al.). Of all the kings of Israel, only Jehoram 
and Hosea are not mentioned as referred to in the Israelite 



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BOOK TRADE 



annals. Of the kings of Judah (after Solomon) only Ahaziah, 
Athaliah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah are not men- 
tioned in this regard. It is uncertain whether these books 
were royal records themselves or edited annals based on the 
records. It seems likely in view of the negative references to 
certain kings (Zimri, Shallum, and Manasseh), which would 
not very likely be the product of the kings own recorders, 
that the books were edited annals. Furthermore, the Judean 
author of Kings could hardly have had access to all the royal 
records of the northern kingdom. The content of these books 
appears identical in character to the Assyrian annals. Probably 
the mass of facts on royal activities in Kings came from these 
books. Chronicles mentions the book of the kings of Israel 
(i Chron. 9:1; 11 Chron. 20:34) and the book of the kings of 
Israel and Judah (or Judah and Israel; 11 Chron. 16: 11; 27:7; et 
al.). The chronicler seems to be referring to the same works, 
but probably did not actually have them at his disposal. 

bibliography: JA. Montgomery, Critical and Exegetical 

Commentary on the Book of Kings (ice, 1951), 24-38; B. Maisler 

(Mazar), in: iej, 2 (1952), 82-88. add. bibliography: M. Cogan, 

1 Kings (ab; 2000), 89-91. 

[Michael V. Fox] 

BOOK TRADE. 

Antiquity 

Information on the book trade in antiquity among Jews is very 
scanty. In biblical and talmudic times the scribe himself was 
the seller of his products (Tosef., Bik. 2:15; Pes. 50b; Git. 54b). 
The Tosefta (Av. Zar. 3:7-8) and the Jerusalem Talmud (Av. 
Zar. 2:2, 41a) speak of a gentile bookseller in Sidon who sold 
Bibles. While it was forbidden to sell sacred books to non-Jews 
(Tosef., Av. Zar. 2:4), it was permitted to exceed the current 
price by half a dinar to buy (really redeem) them from them 
(Git. 45b). Otherwise a man might buy sacred books from ev- 
ery Jew, but no one should sell his own except for particularly 
important reasons (Meg. 27a; cf. Sh. Ar., yd 270:1). A Torah 
scroll is literally priceless and no claim can be made for over- 
charging (bm 4:9). A story is told from Babylonia in the fourth 
century of a Sefer Torah which was stolen, sold at 80 zuz (ap- 
prox. $1,200), and resold at 120 before the thief was found (bk 
115a). A cushion and worn copies of Psalms, Proverbs, and Job 
were valued at five minah (approx. $75; Git. 35a). 

Middle Ages 

In the Mediterranean area books circulated freely in the early 
Middle Ages, as can be gathered from documents recovered 
from the Cairo *Genizah. Among the wares of Nahrai b. Nis- 
sim, a wholesale merchant of high standing in n th -century 
Egypt, were a variety of Hebrew and Arabic books: Bible, 
Talmud, rabbinics and homiletics, grammars, etc. They were 
transported or shipped in wickerwork crates or other baskets 
as well as in tin or lead cases. One document reveals the sale 
by two ladies of a Bible codex for 20 dinars; books were also 
used as collateral and passed from generation to generation 
as family heirlooms. In the Genizah lists of books have been 



found with prices attached which are apparently booksellers' 
catalogs (Tarbiz, 30 (1961), 171-85). The (auction?) catalog of 
the library of Abraham he-Hasid of Cairo, sold after his death 
in 1223 by the Jewish court, has also been preserved. 

Individual authors, apart from the professional scribes, 
sold their own books, while others paid scribes to copy books 
for them. By the Middle Ages the itinerant bookseller emerged, 
"rolling" his stock from city to city or country to country in 
special barrels, and carrying with him booklists, a forerunner 
of the catalog. They approached bibliophiles whose names 
were well-known to offer them their wares. Aaron, whose 
collection, brought back from Spain, was ransacked by *Im- 
manuel of Rome at Perugia around 1300, may have been a 
bibliophile, not a dealer as is generally stated, though he car- 
ried with him a list of his 180 books (Mahberot Immanuel ha- 
Romiy ed. by D. Yarden (1957), 161-6). 

trade in printed books. When books began to be printed 
from the end of the 15 th century onward and were available in 
greater quantities and at considerably cheaper prices, it be- 
came possible to speak of a proper trade in Hebrew or Jewish 
books. Once more the printers themselves or their agents - as 
well as the authors - were the principal booksellers. The fa- 
mous Gershom *Soncino sold his books while moving from 
place to place, while his great competitor Daniel *Bomberg 
handed the Swiss scholar Conrad Gesner a list with prices of 
75 Hebrew books, printed by himself and others, and Gesner 
printed the list in Latin in his Pandect ae (1548). Two Jew- 
ish bookdealers on a large scale, David Bono and Graziadio 
(-Judah?) are mentioned in Naples in 1491, being exempted 
from tolls and duties like other bookdealers who followed the 
same calling. The former is recorded as exporting 16 cases of 
printed books in one consignment. Whether they were in 
Hebrew is not specifically stated, but is probable. R. Benja- 
min Zeev of Arta (c. 1500) refers in his responsa to the useful 
function of the itinerant booksellers of his day. The will of R. 
'Aaron b. David Cohen of Ragusa (1656) gives some interest- 
ing details on how books were diffused: he left money for the 
publication of his Zekan Aharon, of which 800 copies were to 
be printed: 200 were to be sent to Constantinople, 100 to Sa- 
lonika, 50 to Venice, 20 to Sofia, 10 to Ancona, 20 to Rome, 
50 to Central and Eastern Europe, 50 to Holland, to various 
places in Italy and to Erez Israel; the last were to be distrib- 
uted without charge. Issuing works in "installments" was not 
uncommon in early Jewish publishing, particularly by the 
Constantinople presses. Thus the responsa of Isaac b. Sheshet 
(Constantinople, 1547) were printed in sections and sold in 
this form by the printer to subscribers week by week. 

From the 17 th century onward the book fairs of Frank- 
furt on the Main became centers for the diffusion of Hebrew 
books also. Two Jewish booksellers of Frankfurt, Gabriel Luria 
and Jacob Hamel, were in correspondence with the *Bux- 
torfs with reference to the sale of books. The Buxtorfs were 
also in contact with Judah Romano of Constantinople, who, 
whether a professional bookdealer or not, was active in the 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



77 



BOONE, RICHARD 



Hebrew book trade. *Manasseh Ben Israel is known to have 
attended the Frankfurt fair in 1634 - the only Jew among 159 
Christians - but his application for membership of the Am- 
sterdam booksellers' guild in 1648 was refused. The catalog (in 
Spanish) published by his son Samuel (1652) includes some 
books which were apparently printed by other firms. Some 
years before, Samuel had also distributed a list of secondhand 
books which he had for sale, copies of which even reached 
England. Isaac Fundam (Fundao) of Amsterdam produced 
a printed catalog of books and manuscripts in Spanish and 
Portuguese (1726), and works purchased from him are occa- 
sionally recorded. At the end of the 17 th century, the Proops 
firm of Amsterdam styled themselves in their publications 
"Printers and Booksellers": their first catalog (Appiryon She- 
lomo) appeared in 1730; they had already been admitted to the 
booksellers' guild in 1677. 

At the end of the 18 th century Johanan Levi Rofe ("the 
physician") was also active in the book trade in Amsterdam. 
In the 18 th century, especially in England, Jewish and Hebrew 
works were frequently published by subscription, a wealthy 
person sometimes purchasing several copies. The lists of sub- 
scribers printed with the works in question are often impor- 
tant historical sources. The business of distributing books in 
bulk by the publishers could be complicated. They were not 
infrequently disposed of by barter, in some instances in ex- 
change for wine. In Eastern Europe the great fairs were the 
centers for bookdealing, and cheap *chapbooks were sold all 
over the country by itinerant dealers. The Council of Lithu- 
anian Jewry in 1679 ordered that each community should ap- 
point a person to purchase tractates of the Talmud at the fairs 
of Stolowicze and Kopyl so as to stimulate study. James Levi, 
who conducted book auctions in London from about 1711 to 
!733> presumably dealt solely in non- Jewish books. On the 
other hand, Moses Benjamin *Foa (1729-1822), book pur- 
veyor to the court of Modena and a dealer on a grand scale, 
was deeply interested in Jewish literature also, though more as 
a collector than a merchant. D. Friedlaender and his friends 
obtained in 1784 a royal license for their Orientalische Buch- 
druckerei und Buchhandlung (for a catalog see Steinschneider, 
in zgjd, 5 (1892), i68f). Heirs to collections of Hebrew books 
who wished to dispose of them produced sale-catalogs, such 
as those published by the heirs of David *Oppenheim; two 
separate catalogs of this famous and outstanding collection 
were printed: Reshimah Tammah (Hamburg, 1782) and Ke- 
hillat David (ibid. y 1826, with Latin translation). 

Modern Times 

In the 19 th century, in Hebrew as in general books, there was 
a division between printers on the one hand and ^publishers 
and booksellers on the other. In Eastern Europe, however, the 
three functions remained united in the activities of such firms 
as Romm in Vilna, which published catalogs as well. In the 
20 th century, the center of the Jewish secondhand book trade 
was first Berlin, with the firm of Asher, and then Frankfurt 
with Joseph Baer, Bamberger and Wahrmann (later of Jeru- 



salem), A.J. Hoffmann, J. Kauffmann, and Leipzig with M.W. 
Kaufmann. The firms of Schwager and Fraenkel (of Husiatyn, 
later Vienna, Tel Aviv, and New York), F. Muller (Amsterdam), 
and B.M. Rabinowitz (Munich) made contributions to schol- 
arship through their diffusion of rare books, and sometimes 
through their learned catalogs, as did Ephraim *Deinard in 
the United States. The journeys undertaken by some of these 
booksellers in search of rarities place them almost in the cat- 
egory of explorers. In London Vallentine (later Shapiro, Val- 
lentine) was active from at least the beginning of the 19 th cen- 
tury, followed by the firms of R. Mazin, M. Cailingold and 
Rosenthal, while in Paris the firm of Lipschutz was eminent for 
many years; in the United States the *Bloch Publishing Com- 
pany has been in existence for over a century and the Hebrew 
Publishing Company since the 1890s. Important Jewish book- 
sellers in Switzerland were T. Gewuerz and V. Goldschmidt of 
Basle; in Holland J.L. Joachimsthal and M. Packter of Amster- 
dam; in Berlin M. Poppelauer and L. Lamm; in Vienna and 
Budapest J. Schlesinger. Some non-Jewish booksellers, such 
as O. Harrassowitz (Leipzig, then Wiesbaden) and Spirgates 
(Leipzig); Mags Brothers and Sothebys (London), have also 
played a role in the sale of Hebraica and Judaica. 

See ^Archives; ^Libraries; ^Manuscripts; ^Printing, He- 
brew. 

bibliography: A. Yaari, Mehkerei Sefer (1958), 163-9, 
430-44; idem, in: ks, 43 (1967/68), 121-2; idem, Ha-Defus ha-Ivri 
be-Kushta (1967), 13-15; S. Assaf, in: ks, 16 (1939/40), 493-5; M. Kay- 
serling, in: rej, 8 (1884), 74-95; F. Homeyer, Deutsche Juden als Bi- 
bliophilen und Antiquare (1966 ); J. Bloch, Hebrew Printing in Naples 
(1942), 6-7; S. Kaznelson, in: idem (ed.)> Juden im Deutschen Kul- 
turbereich (1962 3 ), 131-46; H. Widmann, Geschichte des Buchhandels 
vom Altertum bis zur Gegenwart (1952); S.D. Goitein, A Mediterra- 
nean Society, 1 (1967), index. 

[Cecil Roth / Abraham Meir Habermann] 

BOONE, RICHARD (1917-1981). U.S. actor. Born in Los 
Angeles, Boone was the son of a successful corporate lawyer. 
He attended Stanford University but left before he graduated. 
He dabbled in painting, writing, boxing, and working in an 
oil field before enlisting in the U.S. Navy as an aerial gunner 
(1941-45). After the war, he used the g.i. Bill to study act- 
ing at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actor's Studio in 
New York. He also studied movement with Martha Graham. 
Boone debuted on Broadway in Judith Andersons Medea. He 
made his motion picture debut in 1951 in The Halls of Mont- 
ezuma and from then appeared in more than 30 films, includ- 
ing The Robe (1953), Dragnet (1954), Lizzie (1957), The Alamo 
(i960), Thunder of Drums (1961), Rio Conchos (1964), The War 
Lords (1965), Hombre (1967), The Arrangement (1969), Madron 
(197 o), Big Jake (1971), The Shootist (1976) , The Big Sleep (1978), 
Winter Kills (1979), and The Bushido Blade (1981). 

Boone's name became a household word in the U.S. be- 
cause of his starring roles on television in such series as Medic 
(1954-56); the popular western series Have Gun Will Travel 
(1957-63); and The Richard Boone Show (1963-64), which won 



78 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOR, JOSEF 



a Golden Globe in 1964 for Best Television Series. A major 
force on Have Gun Will Travel, Boone directed 27 episodes and 
had final approval on scripts, guest stars, and costumes. He 
also co-wrote the shows enduring theme song "The Ballad of 
Paladin," which became a hit on the pop charts. In its success- 
ful run, the show ranked in the top five programs for most of 
its six years. Boone was a three-time winner of the American 
Television Critics award for Best Actor and was a five-time 
Emmy nominee for his performances in each of his television 
series. Boone moved to Hawaii in 1964 and then to Florida 
in 1971. In 1972 he began commuting to Hollywood to star in 
the tv western series Hec Ramsey, produced by Jack Webb of 
Dragnet fame, until the show ended in 1974. In the mid-1970s 
Boone taught acting at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Flor- 
ida, and the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. 

add. bibliography: F.C. Robertson, A Man Called Pala- 
din (1963); D. Rothel, Richard Boone: A Knight without Armor in a 

Savage Land (2000). 

[Jonathan Licht / Ruth BelorT (2 nd ed.)] 

BOORSTIN, DANIEL J. (1914-2004), U.S. historian. Born in 
Atlanta, Georgia, he joined the University of Chicago in 1944, 
and became professor of American history in 1956. He also 
had a law degree and was a member of the Massachusetts Bar. 
Subsequently he served as director of the National Museum of 
American History and senior historian of the Smithsonian In- 
stitution in Washington, d.c. From 1975 to 1987 he was librarian 
of Congress, where he established the Center for the Book in 
1977 to promote books, reading, libraries, and literacy. Among 
his early works are Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948); The 
Genius of American Politics (1953); America and the Lmage of 
Europe (i960); The Lmage (1962); The Decline of Radicalism 
(1969); The Sociology of the Absurd (1970); and two volumes 
of the Landmark History of the American People (1968/70). His 
highly acclaimed trilogy The Americans (1958, 1965, 1973) ad- 
vanced the thesis that the American experience was shaped by 
the environment of the New World. He was awarded the Pulit- 
zer Prize for the third volume, The Democratic Experience, and 
also won the Parkman and Bancroft prizes. In 1989 he received 
the National Book Award for Distiguished Contributions to 
American Letters. A second popular trilogy describes mans 
pursuit of knowledge, artistic expression, and philosophic 
truth. This includes The Discoverers (1983), The Creators (1992), 
and The Seekers (1998). Cleopatra's Nose, a volume of "Essays 
on the Unexpected," appeared in 1994. In 1995 the Modern 
Library published The Daniel J. Boorstin Reader and in 2000 
Greenwood Press published Da nielj. Boorstin: A Comprehen- 
sive and Selectively Annotated Bibliography, compiled by An- 
gela Michele Leonard and containing over 1,300 items. "For 
me," Boorstin said, "the task of the historian is not to chisel a 
personal or definitive view of the past on concrete. Rather, it 
is to see the iridescence of the past, fully aware that it will have 
a new and unsuspected iridescence in the future." 

bibliography: Y. French, in: Library of Congress Informa- 
tion Bulletin (Jan. 2001). 



BOPPARD, town in Coblenz district in Germany. The earliest 
reference to Jews there dates from the last quarter of the 11 th 
century. In 1179, 13 Jews in Boppard were murdered follow- 
ing a *blood libel. In 1196, eight Jews in the town were mas- 
sacred by Crusaders. Subsequently, the leader of the commu- 
nity, the learned and wealthy R. Hezekiah b. Reuben, managed 
to secure the protection of the authorities. A Jewish quarter 
(Judengasse, vicus Judaeorum) is first mentioned in Boppard 
in 1248-50. In 1287, 40 Jews were massacred in Boppard and 
Oberwesel: others during the *Armleder persecutions of 1337 
and during the Black Death in 1349. In 1312, Boppard ceased 
to be a free imperial city and the Jews came under the juris- 
diction of the archbishops of Trier. In 1418, all Jews were 
expelled from the archbishopric. Jews resettled in Boppard 
in 1532, and by the 1560s numbered approximately 32 fami- 
lies. There were 53 Jews living in Boppard at the beginning 
of the 19 th century, 101 in 1880, 80 in 1895, 108 in 1910, 125 in 
1926-27 (out of a total population of 7,000), and 92 in 1933. 
At this time the community possessed a synagogue, a ceme- 
tery, and two charitable institutions. Under the Nazi regime, 
two-thirds of the Jews managed to leave by 1941. On Novem- 
ber 9, 1938 (Kristallnacht), the interior of the synagogue was 
destroyed, although the building was spared because of its 
proximity to neighboring buildings. The Torah scrolls, ritual 
objects, and communal archives were thrown into the street 
and destroyed. In 1942, the 32 remaining Jews were deported 
to the East. Three Jews settled in Boppard after World War 11 
but subsequently left. 

bibliography: Aronius, Regesten, 162, 311, 338, 572, 576; 
Germ. Jud, 1 (1963), 6if; 2 (1968), 96f.; Salfeld, Martyrol, 238, 276, 285; 
Baron, Social 2 , 4 (1957), 133; fjw (1932-33), 218; Israelitisches Fami- 
lienblatt, 36 no. 18 (1934), 13; zgjd, 2 (1930), 109, 286; Kahlenberg, 
in: Zwischen Rhein und Mosel, derKreis St. Goar (1967), 6431?. add. 
bibliography: K.-J. Burkard, Unter den Juden. Achthundert Jahre 
Juden in Boppard (1996). 

[Chasia Turtel] 

BOR, JOSEF (1906-1979), Czech novelist. Born in Ostrava, 
Bor spent the years 1942-45 in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) 
and Buchenwald concentration camps. His entire family per- 
ished in the Holocaust. In the 1960s he published two nov- 
els, Opustend panenka ("Abandoned Doll," 1961) on the fate 
of three generations of the Breuerer family imprisoned in 
Theresienstadt, and Terezinske requiem (1963; The Terezin Re- 
quiem, 1963) about the conductor Raphael Schachter, who 
performed Verdi's Requiem in Theresienstadt in 1944 and 
whose singers - Jews - were sent to the death camps of the 
East. In the 1970s Bor published a few short prose works in 
the Jewish Yearbook (Zidovskd rocenka), including Tajemstvi 
stare knihy ("The Mystery of an Old Book," 1970) and Ten tfeti 
("The Third One," 1971). 

bibliography: Al. MikulaSek et al., Literatura s hvezdou Da- 
vidovou, vol. 1 (1998-2002). 

[Milos Pojar (2 nd ed.)] 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



79 



BORAH, WOODROW WILSON 



BORAH, WOODROW WILSON (1912-1999), U.S. histo- 
rian. Born in Utica, Mississippi, Borah attended the Univer- 
sity of California at Berkeley, where he earned his bachelor's, 
master's, and doctoral degrees. After teaching briefly at Prince- 
ton University, he worked for the U.S. State Department as an 
analyst in the Office of Strategic Services (1942-47). He joined 
Berkeley's history department in 1948 and was appointed pro- 
fessor of history in 1962. He served as chair of the campus's 
Center for Latin American Studies from 1973 to 1979. He re- 
tired from active teaching in 1980. 

Borah was an authority on the social and economic his- 
tory of Latin America, specializing in colonial Mexico and in 
historical demography. For decades he was considered one 
of the most influential and active scholars working to recon- 
struct the colonial experience in Spanish America. His pri- 
mary interest was the development of methods for analyzing 
Mexican and Spanish colonial tribute data for demographic 
information. His chief works are New Spain's Century of De- 
pression (1951), Early Colonial Trade and Navigation Between 
Mexico and Peru (1954), The Aboriginal Population of Central 
Mexico on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (1963), justice by In- 
surance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the 
Legal Aides of the Half -Real (1983), and Price Trends of Royal 
Tribute Commodities in Nueva Galicia, 1557-1598 (1992). Bo- 
rah was involved in local synagogue affairs and Jewish phil- 
anthropic efforts. 

[Ruth Beloff (2 nd ed.)] 

BORAISHA, MENAHEM (Menahem Goldberg; sometimes 
simply Menahem; 1888-1949), Yiddish poet and essayist. Born 
in Brest-Litovsk, the son of a Hebrew teacher, he combined 
a thorough Jewish education with attendance at the Russian 
school in his birthplace. At the age of 16 he joined the Social- 
ist Zionists and began to write poetry in Russian and Yiddish. 
In Warsaw from 1905, he received encouragement from I.L. 
*Peretz, publishing his first poems in Yiddish journals, and 
drama reviews for the daily Haynt. While serving in the Rus- 
sian Army (1909-11), he published his impressions of barrack- 
life in both Haynt and Fraynd. His poem "Poyln" ("Poland," 
1914) expressed the tense relationship between Jews and Poles. 
He settled in the U.S. in 1914, and in 1918 joined the edito- 
rial board of the Yiddish daily, Der Tog. His book of poems 
A Ring in der Keyt ("A Link in the Chain," 1916) was followed 
by Zamd ("Sand," 1920), a collection which included a mem- 
orable poem on Theodor *Herzl. After a trip to the U.S.S.R. 
in 1926, he contributed to the Communist daily Frayhayt but 
parted company with it in 1929, when it justified Arab attacks 
on Jews. He then worked with the papers Vokh and Yidish and 
became press officer of the 'American Jewish Joint Distribu- 
tion Committee. 

His poem Zavl Rimer ("Zavl the Harness -Maker," 1923), a 
novel in verse, in which Yiddish speech rhythms are combined 
with poetic meter, several parts of which are in the tradition of 
Yiddish folksong, exposed the horror of the postwar Russian 
pogroms. Der Geyer ("The Wayfarer," 2 vols., 1943) is a spiri- 



tual autobiography on which he worked for ten years. It de- 
scribes the progress of its main character, Noah Marcon, from 
skepticism to faith and from the profane to the holy. The work 
is a poetical attempt to summarize the intellectual legacy of 
Judaism and Jewish history in recent generations, while gen- 
erally dramatizing human thought and the struggles of con- 
science within vividly portrayed social and natural settings. 
It extends into non-human spheres, including an empathetic 
portrait of a dog, often attains a cosmic consciousness, and is 
written in a great variety of verse forms, employed with tech- 
nical inventiveness. His last poems, Durkh Doyres ("Through 
Generations"), appeared posthumously in 1950. 

bibliography: Rejzen, Leksikon, 2 (1927), 438-41; Alge- 
meyne Entsiklopedye, 5 (1944), 230-2; B. Rivkin, Yidishe Dikhter in 
Amerike (1947), 249-64; J. Botoshansky, Pshat (1952), 151-86; lnyl, 
1 (1956), 246-9; S. Bickel, Shrayberfun Mayn Dor, 1 (1958), 208-15; E. 
Biletzky, Essays on Yiddish Poetry and Prose Writers (1969), 103-16. 

[Shemuel Niger (Charney) / Shmoyl Naydorf and Leye Robinson 

(2 nd ed.)] 

BORCHARDT, LUCY (1878-1969), German shipping owner 
and operator. On the death of her husband Richard she be- 
came head of the Hamburg Fair play Tug Company whose 
craft were known throughout the continent. From 1933 she 
devoted her energies and resources to enable Jews to escape 
from Germany. She herself left in 1938 and with her son Karl 
founded the Fairplay Towage and Shipping Company and the 
Borchardt Lines in London. With her son Jens she formed the 
Atid Navigation in Haifa which was liquidated in 1968. After 
having fallen out with her son Jens she established a competing 
line to Israel, the Lucy Borchardt Shipping Ltd. "Mother Bor- 
chardt," as she was known in shipping circles, took a special 
interest in the personal needs and welfare of her staff. 

add. bibliography: I. Lorenz, in: Zeitschrift fuer Ham- 
burgische Geschichte, 83 (1997), 1, 445-72. 

[Joachim O. Ronall] 

BORCHARDT, LUDWIG (1863-1938), German Egyptolo- 
gist and archaeologist. Borchardt's outstanding career as an 
Egyptologist rested on his knowledge of architecture as well 
as Egyptian language. Born and educated in Berlin, he became 
assistant to the department of Egyptian art in the Berlin Mu- 
seum. In 1895 he left for Egypt where he examined details in 
important excavations, and was thus able to revise the inter- 
pretation of typical Egyptian building complexes. He was the 
first to recognize that the pyramid formed an integral part of 
the temple area. He excavated several pyramids and published 
monographs on their origin and development. His study of the 
ancient Egyptian column types and their development helped 
him to work out the complicated archaeological history of the 
great temples at Thebes. The structure of the early Egyptian 
house became the subject of Borchardt's research at the time of 
his excavations of Tell el-Amarna, the town in which Pharaoh 
Amenophis iv-Akhenaton (1379-1362 b.c.e.) had lived. In the 
course of these excavations, he uncovered the workshops of 



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ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BORDEAUX 



the royal sculptor Thutmose, with many naturalistic portrait 
models, among them the world-famous painted limestone 
model head of Queen Nefertiti. Numerous excavations and 
publications testify to the continuous industry of Borchardt. 
In 1906 he founded the German Institute for Ancient Egyptian 
History and Archaeology (Deutsches Institut fuer aegyptische 
Altertumskunde) in Cairo and was its director until World 
War 1 and from 1923 until 1929. Borchardt played an impor- 
tant role in the planning and organization of the great Cata- 
logue General des Antiquites Egyptiennes du Musee du Caire 
(1897 ff., still unfinished). Later he became interested in the 
question of the identification of Atlantis, the lost continent, 
which he suggested (at a conference of the Paris Atlantidean 
Society, 1926) should be identified with Bahr Atala, i.e., "Sea 
of Atlantis," submerged c. 1250 b.c.e., in the northern Sahara, 
south of Tunis. Among his many publications are Die aegyp- 
tische Pflanzensaeule (1897); Zur Baugeschichte des Amonstem- 
pels von Karnak (1905); Portraets der Koenigin Nofret-ete aus 
den Grabungen 1912-13 in Tell el- Am arn a (1923); Die Enstehung 
der Pyramide, an der Baugeschichte der Pyramide beiMejdum 
nachgewiesen (1928); and Die Entstehung des Generalkatalogs 
und seine Entwicklung in den Jahren 1897-99 (1937). 

[Penuel P. Kahane] 

BORCHARDT, RUDOLF (1877-1945), German poet, es- 
sayist, and cultural historian. Borchardt, the son of Martin 
Borchardt, a leading Jewish banker and director of the Ber- 
liner Handelsgesellschaft, was born in Koenigsberg (Prussia). 
He always stressed his German and classical heritage as the 
exclusive determinants of his character and convictions, and 
categorically rejected any Jewish identification - occasion- 
ing Theodor Lessings remark that Borchardt was "the most 
forceful example of Jewish creativity arising from self-ha- 
tred." Even after Hitler's rise to power, he wrote to his friend 
and biographer Werner Kraft: 'Any conception of Jews as a 
people is completely alien to me." In many of his poetic writ- 
ings Borchardt adapted his style to the period concerned. 
Thus Das Buch Yoram (1907) recalls the German of Luther's 
Bible translation, his Durant (1920) the style of Wolfram von 
Eschenbach's medieval minnelieder y and his dramatic poem 
Verkuendigung (1920) that of the German medieval mystery 
plays. His translations from old Italian also show this highly 
developed art of acculturation, for example in his version of 
Dantes Divine Comedy into i4 th -century German (1930). His 
historical intuition and remarkable knowledge of classical 
languages and cultures led him to develop certain scientific 
theories on the unity of Mediterranean culture. His close fa- 
miliarity with the German past and his veneration for Ger- 
man literature of the humanist period find their expression 
in his representative anthology of the most beautiful German 
travelers* descriptions from all over the world, Der Deutsche 
in der Landschaft (1925). Always aiming at the cultural resto- 
ration of the past, Borchardt had a close attachment to two 
other conservative poets, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Ru- 
dolf Alexander Schroeder (whose niece he married), whereas 



he opposed and despised the circle of Stefan George and its 
programmatic aestheticism. Despite his pro -German views 
he was persecuted by the Gestapo when he was living near 
Lucca in Tuscany but succeeded in going into hiding in the 
Tyrol, where he died. 

bibliography: W. Haas, "Der Fall Rudolf Borchardt," in: 
Krojanker, Juden in der deutschen literatur (1922); R. Hennecke, Ru- 
dolf Borchardt, Einfuehrung und Auswahl (1954); H. Wolffheim, Geist 
der Poesie (1958); W. Kraft, Rudolf Borchardt - Welt aus Poesie und 
Geschichte (1961); E. Osterkamp (ed.), Rudolf Borchardt und seine 
Zeitgenossen (1997); A. Kissler, "Wo bin ich denn behaust?" Rudolf 
Borchardt und die Erfindung des Ichs (2003); K. Kauffmann (ed.), 
Dichterische Politik. Studien zu Rudolf Borchardt (2002). 

[Phillipp Theisohn (2 nd ed.)] 

°BORCHSENIUS, POUL (1897-1997), Danish pastor and 
author. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark in World 
War 11, Borchsenius was an active member of the under- 
ground. He escaped to Sweden, where he engaged in welfare 
work among his Christian fellow-refugees. He kept in close 
touch with Jewish fugitives from Denmark and became an en- 
thusiastic Zionist. Borchsenius wrote a series of five volumes 
on Jewish history after the destruction of the Second Temple: 
Stjernesonnen (1952; Son of a Star, i960), based on the life 
of *Bar Kokhba; De tre ringe (1954; The Three Rings, 1963), a 
history of Spanish Jewry; Bag muren (1957; Behind the Wall, 
1964), an account of the medieval ghetto; Loste lenker (1958; 
The Chains are Broken, 1964), the story of Jewish emancipa- 
tion; and Ogdet blev morgen, historien om vor tidsjoder (i960; 
And it was Morning, History of the Jews in our Time, 1962). In 
two other works, Sol stat stille ("Sun, Stand Thou Still," 1950) 
and Syv ar for Rachel; Israel 1948-1955 ("Seven Years for Ra- 
chel," 1955), Borchsenius wrote about the State of Israel. He 
also published a biography of Israel's first premier, Ben Gurion: 
den moderne Israels skaber ("Ben Gurion, Creator of Modern 
Israel," 1956), and Two Ways to God (1968), a study of Juda- 
ism and Christianity. 

[Torben Meyer] 

BORDEAUX (Heb. tinKmi), city in the department of Gi- 
ronde, S.E. France; in the Middle Ages, capital of the duchy of 
Guienne. The first written evidence of the presence of Jews in 
Bordeaux dates to the second half of the sixth century, when 
it is related that a Jew derided a priest who expected a saint 
to cure him of his illness. A golden signet ring, dating from 
the beginning of the fourth century was found in Bordeaux 
in 1854 bearing three menorot and the inscription "Aster" 
(= Asterius). Prudence of Troyes relates that the Jews behaved 
treacherously during the capture of Bordeaux by the Normans 
in 848. Although based on malice, this anecdote confirms the 
presence of Jews in the city. A document from 1072 refers to 
a Mont-Judaique, outside the walls between the present Rues 
Dauphine and Meriadec, where the Jewish cemetery was lo- 
cated. The Jewish street, called Arrua Judega in 1247 (now Rue 
Cheverus) lay at the foot of this hill (now leveled off). The 



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BORDEAUX 



present Porte Dijeaux (= ijeus, de Giu) is referred to as Porta 
Judaea from 1075. While Bordeaux was under English sover- 
eignty (1154-1453), the Jews were spared the edicts of expul- 
sion issued by the kings of France, though they were nominally 
expelled in 1284, 1305, and 1310-11. The anti- Jewish measures 
introduced by the English kings were undoubtedly aimed at 
extorting money, since the Jews continued to reside in Bor- 
deaux and pursue their activities. In 1275 and 1281 Edward 1 
intervened on behalf of the Jews of Bordeaux who were being 
overtaxed by nobles. However, Edward 11 issued a further in- 
effective edict of expulsion in 1313, and in 1320 the Jews were 
savagely attacked by the *Pastoureaux. Their residence was 
authorized by Edward in in 1342, when they had to make an 
annual payment of eight pounds of pepper to the archbishop. 
The Jews in Bordeaux were organized into the Communitas 
Judeorum Vasconie ("Community of the Jews of Gascony"). 
It is not certain whether or when they were formally expelled 
after Bordeaux was incorporated into France in 1453. 

At the end of the 15 th century, Marranos began to ar- 
rive in Bordeaux, first coming from Spain and later from 
Portugal. The Marranos were welcomed for their commer- 
cial activities, and in 1550 they obtained letters -patent from 
Henry 11 authorizing "the merchants and other Portuguese 
called 'New Christians' " to reside in the towns and locali- 
ties of their choice. They outwardly practiced Catholicism, 
and although the general populace suspected them the au- 
thorities closed their eyes to possible Judaizing. A more lib- 
eral attitude was evinced when in 1604 and in 1612 Marechal 
d'Ornano, lieutenant-general of Guienne, issued an ordinance 
forbidding persons to "speak ill of or do evil to the Portuguese 
merchants." Since they lived mainly in the two parishes of St. 
Eulalie and St. Eloy, Marranos claimed burial in the cemeter- 
ies of the two parish churches, as well as those belonging to 
the parishes of St. Projet and St. Michel, and in the cemeter- 
ies of the Augustine, Carmelite, Franciscan, and St. Francis of 
Paola monasteries. In 1710 a portion of the Catholic cemetery 
was reserved especially for them. Their marriages were per- 
formed by Catholic priests, and all the formalities, including 
application for papal dispensation in cases of consanguinity, 
were duly observed. A change of attitude can be noted in 1710 
when the Marranos began to profess Judaism more openly. 
While priests continued to register their marriages, they gen- 
erally added a note to the effect that the marriage had been or 
would be performed "in accordance with the customary rites 
of the Portuguese nation." 

At the beginning of the 18 th century, a communal institu- 
tion called the Sedaca was established, ostensibly to serve as a 
charitable organization. Out of its funds, which were derived 
from regular contributions paid by its members according to 
their ability, the organization paid for the maintenance of the 
Sephardi communities of the "four holy cities" of Erez Israel, 
for the local poor, and for needy travelers. Subsequently, the 
Sedaca undertook to provide for the cost of a physician for the 
poor, as well as to pay for certain officeholders in the commu- 
nity, including the teachers of the talmud torah (established 



before 1710), and a rabbi. The first to hold this office was Jo- 
seph Falcon (from 1719), followed by Jacob Hayyim Athias and 
the latter s son David. It was only in new letters -patent obtained 
in 1723 (the previous ones had been granted by Louis xiv 
in 1656) that the "Portuguese merchants" were for the first 
time officially referred to as Jews. At the turn of the century, 
Jews who declared themselves as such more openly had arrived 
from Avignon and Comtat-Venaissin to settle in Bordeaux. 
In 1722 they numbered 22 families. For reasons of res- 
pectability and other considerations, the "Portuguese" delib- 
erately kept apart from the newcomers. In 1731 the municipal 
administrator objected to the regulation whereby the "Por- 
tuguese" Jews of Bordeaux had to pay protection tax like the 
Jews of *Metz. Nevertheless, in 1734 this official reminded 
the Jews of Bordeaux that the practice of the Jewish religion 
in public was forbidden. A report of 1753 mentions as a 
"scandal" that the Jewish religion was being practiced in 
seven synagogues; in fact these were prayer rooms in private 
dwellings. 

Meanwhile, the communal organization of the Portu- 
guese, the Sedaca, had taken the name "Nation." Apart from 
providing funds for religious and charitable requirements, it 
also supplied the funds necessary for registering letters-pat- 
ent, for the salary of a representative in Paris, and other pur- 
poses. The "Nation" assumed the role of an internal police, 
in particular expelling paupers or vagrants from Bordeaux. 
Strictly charitable functions were henceforth administered 
by specialized associations, the Yesibot, which included the 
Hebra or Hermandad for circumcisions and wedding ceremo- 
nies, and also attended to visits to the sick and funerals; the 
Guemilout Hazadim, the association of gravediggers; and the 
Yesiba Bikour Holim and Misenet Holim, for the care of and 
visits to the sick (see also *Hevrah). From 1728, the "Nation" 
had its own cemetery (today Cours St. Jean no. 105), acquired 
by David Gradis in 1724. Burials took place there from 1725 
until the French Revolution (this cemetery was closed in 1911), 
and from 1764 in a second cemetery (now Cours de l'Yser no. 
176), which subsequently served the entire Jewish community 
of Bordeaux. The "Avignonese" owned a cemetery from 1728 
on land purchased by David Petit (now Rue Sauteyron no. 49); 
this cemetery was used until 1805. The status of the "Nation" 
of the "Portuguese" community was approved by Louis xv on 
Dec. 14, 1769. The "Avignonese" constituted themselves a "Na- 
tion" in 1759, but had, in fact, been an organic body for a long 
while. The "Portuguese" engaged in financial activities and 
the supply of marine equipment, the "Avignonese" engaged 
almost exclusively in the textile and clothing trades, new or 
secondhand. In 1734 a decree was issued expelling the "Avi- 
gnonese, Tudesque, or German" Jews from Bordeaux. This, 
however, they managed to evade by obtaining permission to 
prolong their stay under various pretexts. New decrees of ex- 
pulsion were issued in 1740 and 1748. In 1759 six Avignonese 
Jewish families at last obtained letters-patent similar to those 
of the "Portuguese." 

At the beginning of the 18 th century, the Portuguese 



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ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BORDJEL 



Jews in Bordeaux numbered 327 families (1,422 persons), 
while the "Avignonese" Jews numbered 81 families (348 per- 
sons). 

In April 1799, on the eve of the French Revolution, 
the "Portuguese Nation" of Bordeaux appointed two repre- 
sentatives, S. Lopes-Dubec and Abraham *Furtado, to attend 
the *Malesherbes Commission, which was studying reforms to 
be applied to the condition of the Jews in France. The com- 
mission proposed that clauses be included in the constitution 
planned for the Jews of France to ensure the maintenance 
of their ancient privileges relating to freedom of residence, 
economic activities, property, etc. It also envisaged the 
possibility of differentiating between the legal status of the 
Spanish and Portuguese Jews on the one hand, and of the 
"German* Jews on the other. In contrast to other communi- 
ties, the Jews of Bordeaux directly participated in the prepa- 
ration of the Estates -General. When on Dec. 24, 1789, this as- 
sembly determined to defer a decision on the concession of 
equal rights to the Jews, a deputation of seven Sephardi Jews 
from Bordeaux, including David Gradis and Abraham Ro- 
drigues, went to Paris. Their activities resulted in a decree 
issued on Jan. 28, 1790, declaring that "all Jews known in 
France under the name of Portuguese, Spanish, and Avig- 
nonese Jews... shall enjoy the rights of citizens." One of the 
first manifestations of this equality of rights was on Dec. 6, 
1790, when A. Furtado and S. Lopes-Dubec took office on the 
municipal council of Bordeaux. The two men also served on 
the Bordeaux Committee for Public Safety formed on June 
10, 1793. No Bordeaux Jews were condemned to death during 
the Reign of Terror, but many were imprisoned or ordered to 
pay heavy fines. 

A census of 1806 records 2,131 Jews living in Bordeaux, 
of whom 1,651 were of Spanish or Portuguese origin; 144 Avi- 
gnonese; and 336 of German, Polish, or Dutch origin. When 
the ^Assembly of Jewish Notables was convened by Napoleon 
that year, the department of the Gironde sent two delegates, 
both from Bordeaux - Abraham Furtado and Isaac Rodrigues. 
Furtado became president of the Assembly, while Rodrigues 
served as its secretary. Following the sessions of the "Great 
Sanhedrin" (see French *Sanhedrin), held in 1807, Bordeaux 
became the seat of a Consistory whose jurisdiction extended 
over ten departments, with 3,713 members. Abraham Andrade 
was appointed chief rabbi. The private prayer rooms were re- 
placed by a large synagogue (Rue Causserouge), inaugurated 
on May 14, 1812, and partly destroyed by fire in 1873. Of the 
12 members of the municipal council in 1830, two were Jews: 
Camille Lopes-Dubec and Joseph Rodrigues. Lopes-Dubec 
was also one of the 15 deputies elected from the department 
of the Gironde to the National Assembly in 1848. In the mid- 
19 th century, Jewish institutions in Bordeaux included a school 
for boys and girls, a trade school, and a talmud torah. In the 
second half of the 19 th century, many Jews sat on the general 
council of the department, on the municipal council, and in 
the chamber of commerce. Adrien Leon was elected to the 
National Assembly in 1875. 



During the 19 th century, the Jewish population of Bor- 
deaux dwindled through emigration, numbering only 1,940 

in 1900. 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

Holocaust and Postwar Periods 

Bordeaux served as a final station for countless Jewish refu- 
gees who fled southward from northern France in May- June 
1940. The town, administered within the Occupied Zone after 
the Franco-German armistice (June 21, 1940), was one of the 
most important centers of Nazi police and military activities. 
Two-thirds of the Jewish population, local Jews and refugees 
alike, were arrested and deported, including the residents of 
the old-age home. A census of the Jewish population of the 
city conducted in June 1941 showed only 1,198 persons origi- 
nating from Bordeaux or from southeastern France out of a 
total of 5,177; most were refugees from other parts of France 
and even from abroad. Between July 1942 and February 1944, 
1,279 Jews were deported from Bordeaux by the Germans. 
A monument has been erected in their memory. In January 
1944, French Fascists ransacked the great synagogue, which 
the Nazis had turned into a detention camp where the vic- 
tims of their roundups awaited deportation. After the war, the 
survivors of the Bordeaux Jewish community reconstructed 
the synagogue with the aid of photographs and eyewitness 
accounts. When the task was completed 12 years later, the 
Bordeaux synagogue (which was originally built in 1882) was 
restored to its former renown as the largest (1,500 seats) and 
most beautiful Sephardi synagogue in France. Meanwhile the 
Jewish population increased with the arrival of new members, 
including a new Ashkenazi congregation. In i960 there were 
3,000 Jews in the community, and with the arrival of Jewish 
immigrants from N. Africa, the population doubled, with 
5,500 persons in 1969. Bordeaux, the seat of a Chief Rabbin- 
ate, maintains a community center and a network of Jewish 

institutions. 

[Georges Levitte] 

bibliography: L.F. de Beaufleury, Histoire de letablissement 
desjuifs a Bordeaux et Bayonne (1800); T. Malvezin, Histoire desjuifs 
a Bordeaux (1875); G. Cirot, Les Juifs de Bordeaux (1920); idem, in: 
Revue historiquede Bordeaux..., 29 (1936); 31 (1938); 32 (1939); Gross, 
Gal Jud, 111; A. Detcheverry, Histoire des Israelites de Bordeaux (1850); 
Drouyn, in: Archives historiques de la Gironde, 21 (1881), 159, 272, 533, 
535; 22 (1882), 48, 563, 569, 599, 635, 639; Gaullier, in: rej, 11 (1885), 
781!.; Bouchon, in: Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique de Bordeaux, 
35 (1913X 691!.; A. de Maille, Recherches sur les origines chretiennes de 
Bordeaux (i960), 2iifT.; H.G. Richardson, English Jewry under Ange- 
vin Kings (i960), 232-3; Z. Szajkowski, Analytical Franco-Jewish Ga- 
zetteer (1966), index; idem, in: paajr, 27 (1958), 831!. 

BORDJEL (Burgel), Tunisian family of community lead- 
ers and scholars. In the 17 th century Abraham amassed 
a large fortune in Leghorn and returned to Tunis. His son 
nathan (1) (d. 1791), a student of Isaac *Lumbroso, wrote Hok 
Natan (Leghorn, 1776-78), reprinted in the Vilna edition of 
the Talmud. A rabbinical authority, Nathan was consulted by 
rabbis from Erez Israel and elsewhere. He died in Jerusalem. 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



S3 



BORENSTEIN, SAM 



His son Elijah hai (i) wrote Migdanot Natan (Leghorn, 
1778) in two parts: commentaries on the Talmud and Maimo- 
nides' Yad Hazakah; and treatises and funeral orations. Elijahs 
son Joseph (1791-1857) supported a yeshivah at his own ex- 
pense and had many disciples. He left two important works: 
Zara de-Yosef (1849) and Va-Yikken Yosef (1852). His brother 
nathan (11), scholar and philanthropist, published the first of 
these works and added a preface. His nephew Elijah hai (ii) 
(d. 1898), caid (Maggid) and chief rabbi of Tunis, published the 
second, solomon, caid in 1853, had great influence on the bey. 
moses (d. 1945) was highly respected for his knowledge, piety, 
and authority. During the Nazi occupation, Moses served in 
the difficult position of a leader of the Tunis community. 

bibliography: D. Caze, Notes bibliographique sur la litte- 

rature juive-tunisienne (1893), 60-76; Hirschberg, Afrikah, 2 (1965), 

index. 

[David Corcos] 

BORENSTEIN, SAM (1908-1969), Canadian artist. Boren- 
stein was born in Kalvarija, Lithuania. At four he moved to 
Suwalki, Poland, where his father, a rabbinical scholar, had a 
job with the Singer Sewing Machine Company. In 1921, he im- 
migrated to Montreal, Canada where he worked for 15 years 
in garment factories. Borenstein studied art in his spare time 
at the Monument National from 1928 to 1929 and by the 1930s 
he was exhibiting in group and solo exhibitions in Montreal 
and Toronto. 

Borensteins paintings transmuted the ordinary reality of 
the mainly Jewish working-class district of Montreal where he 
lived into colorful images of material and natural energy. In 
addition to painting portraits of his family, Montreal Yiddish 
poets, and other artists, during the 1940s Borenstein began 
to concentrate on landscape. His paintings of rural Quebec 
transformed the Laurentian villages into idealized images of 
town life reminiscent of his memories of the shtetls of East- 
ern Europe. In his landscapes, Borensteins focus was on how 
the landscape was changed by the sun and wind, as well as on 
autumnal hues and seasonal aspects such as the color and tex- 
ture of ice and snow. Borenstein believed that the earth was a 
cosmic manifestation reflected in individual consciousness, 
where even the simplest forms of nature could speak directly 
to the artist. "Art," he said, "is my religion. Just as one prays, 
so does one paint - for spiritual satisfaction." 

Borenstein became an antiquarian dealer who played a 
pivotal role in developing the first public collection of Judaic 
ceremonial objects in Canada. This collection is today housed 
in the Aron Museum located at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sho- 
lom in Montreal. The Colours of My Father: A Portrait of Sam 
Borenstein (1991) was an animated film by his daughter, Joyce 
Borenstein, and produced by the National Film Board of Can- 
ada and Imageries Inc. The film won nine international awards 
and was nominated for an Academy Award. 

bibliography: L. Lerner, Sam Borenstein (2004); W. Kuhns 
and L. Rosshandler, Sam Borenstein (1978). 

[Loren Lerner (2 nd ed.)] 



BORGE, VICTOR (originally Borge Rosenbaum; 1909- 
2000), Danish-U.S. satirical comedian. Born in Copenha- 
gen, Borge was the youngest of five sons of the musicians 
Frederikke and Bernhard Rosenbaum. His father played first 
violin with the Royal Danish Philharmonic Orchestra for 35 
years and his mother, a pianist, began teaching her son to play 
the piano when he was three. Recognized as a child prodigy, 
Borge was awarded a full scholarship to the Royal Danish 
Academy of Music at the age of nine. He debuted profession- 
ally by the age of 13. He made his debut as a comedian at 23. 

During the 1930s Borge became one of Scandinavia's 
most popular artists, developing a unique blend of humor and 
music. He toured Europe extensively, and by the late 1930s had 
incorporated anti-Nazi humor into his act. Hitler placed him 
at the top of his personal list of Enemies of the Fatherland. 
When the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940, Borge was on 
a concert tour in Sweden with his American-born wife, Elsie, 
and they fled to Finland. Through Elsies American citizen- 
ship, the Borges secured one of the last places aboard the last 
passenger ship to leave Europe before World War 11, and they 
escaped to America. 

In the United States, Borge learned English by watching 
movies and memorizing the dialogue. He was soon featured 
on Bing Crosbys radio program Kraft Music Hall. 

Borge created the classic routine known as "phonetic 
punctuation," in which he inserted bizarre vocal sounds into 
his monologue to indicate commas, periods, and question 
marks. Another comedic caper was to slide off the piano bench 
when he first sat down to play. Affectionately referred to as 
the "Great Dane," Borge took his blend of classical music and 
comedy on the road, appearing in nightclubs, concert halls, 
and New York's Carnegie Hall. In 1946 he hosted nbc Radio's 
The Victor Borge Show and by 1948 was a frequent guest on Ed 
Sullivan's radio show Toast of the Town. In 1953 Borge launched 
his one-man Broadway show Comedy in Music, which ran 
until 1956. With 849 performances, the show was entered in 
The Guinness Book of World Records as the Longest-Running 
One -Man Show. 

Borge made his television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show 
in 1949 and appeared often on the highly rated variety pro- 
gram. He later hosted his own tv comedy-variety program, 
The Victor Borge Show (1951). He was a guest on many other 
tv shows as well, hosted by such entertainers as Dean Martin, 
Andy Williams, and Johnny Carson. In 1956 Borge was nomi- 
nated for an Emmy for Best Specialty Act but was bested by 
pantomime legend Marcel *Marceau. In a more serious vein, 
Borge also performed as soloist and conductor with many 
leading symphony orchestras. In 1998 he conducted the Royal 
Danish Philharmonic Orchestra in a Royal Command Perfor- 
mance of Mozart's The Magic Flute. 

Dedicated to noble causes, Borge was active in the civil 
rights movement. In 1963 he and Richard Netter created the 
Thanks To Scandinavia Scholarship Fund in recognition of 
the Scandinavian citizens who risked their lives to save thou- 
sands of Jews during the Holocaust. The multimillion-dollar 



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ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BORISLAV 



fund brought more than a thousand Scandinavian students 
and scientists to the United States to study and conduct re- 
search. Borge was awarded a Medal of Honor by the Statue of 
Liberty Centennial Committee; he was knighted by Denmark, 
Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden; and he was honored 
by the United States Congress and the United Nations. In 1991 
he received the Humor Projects International Humor Trea- 
sure award, and in 2000 was the first person selected for the 
Kennedy Center Honors. 

Borge released a number of recordings and video pro- 
grams, including The Best of Victor Borge, a collection of his 
classic routines. It sold three million copies worldwide dur- 
ing its first year. 

Borge co-wrote several books with Robert Sherman, 

among them My Favorite Intermissions (1971), Victor Borge s 

My Favorite Comedies in Music (1980), and Borges Musical 

Briefs (1982). 

[Ruth BelorT (2 nd ed.)] 

BORGHI, LAMBERTO (1907-2000), Italian educator and 
author. Born in Leghorn, Borghi studied at the University of 
Pisa. He went to the U.S. as a refugee in 1938. In 1948 he re- 
turned to Italy to fill the chair of pedagogy at the Universities 
of Pisa, Palermo, and Turin. From 1954 until 1982 he was full 
professor at the University of Florence and directed its Insti- 
tute of Pedagogy. Borghi showed a keen interest in compara- 
tive education and wrote extensively on Italian education. He 
was the most famous follower of John Dewey s methodology, 
focusing his attention on democratic and lay pedagogy. In 
two of his books, Educazione e autorita nellTtalia moderna 
(1951) and Educazione e scuola nelV Italia dbggi (1958), he 
discussed the nature and problems of the Italian educational 
system, including education in the arts and sciences and the 
limitations imposed by inherited social and economic status 
on educational opportunities. His books include Umanismo 
e concezione religiosa in Erasmus di Rotterdam (1936); Educa- 
tion in the U.S.A. (1949); John Dewey e il pensiero pedagogico 
contemporaneo negli Stati Uniti (1951; Eng. tr., 1952); Saggi di 
psicologia delleducazione (1951); Ilfondamento delV educazi- 
one attiva (1952); 77 metodo dei progetti (1952); Leducazione e 
i suoi problemi (1953); L'ideale educative di John Dewey (1955); 
and Educazione e sviluppo sociale (1962). His last work, Edu- 
care alia libertd (1992), is a synthesis of his theories and an 
anthology of European and American essays on the topic of 
education. 

bibliography: G.Z.F. Bereday, Comparative Method in 
Education (1964), 210. add. bibliography: G. Fori, La cittd e la 
scuola (2000). 

[Ernest Schwarcz / Federica Francesconi (2 nd ed.)] 

BORGIL, ABRAHAM BEN AZIZ (d. 1595?), Turkish rab- 
binical scholar. Borgil studied in Salonika for many years un- 
der Samuel b. Moses ^Medina, later becoming head of the 
yeshivah of Nikopol (Bulgaria), where he employed a unique 
approach to the teaching of Talmud. His yeshivah became fa- 



mous and the city became a center of talmudic studies. Bor- 
giPs novellae on tractates Bava Kamma, BavaMezia, Ketubbot, 
and Kiddushin were published under the title Lehem Abbirim 
(Venice, 1605); the novellae on Yevamot, which are attributed 
to him, are probably not his. His novellae on Hullin are extant 
in manuscript (Moscow, Guenzburg Ms. no. 125). In his novel- 
lae, Borgil does not cite his contemporaries or rishonim but 
bases himself, for the most part, upon the tosafists, and, to a 
certain extent, upon Rashi. It was Borgil s practice to refer to 
manuscripts of the Talmud for text verification. 

bibliography: M. Benayahu, in: Sefer ha-Yovel le-Hanokh 
Albeck (1963), 71-80. 

BORINSTEIN, LOUIS J. (1881-1972), U.S. merchant and 
civic leader. Borinstein was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. 
He entered business there and became a partner in the A. 
Borinstein wholesale iron company in 1920. In 1924 he be- 
came vice president of the Indianapolis Machinery and Supply 
Company. Active in civic affairs, Borinstein was president of 
the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce (1931-36), National 
Recovery Administration chairman for Indianapolis, and a 
member of several state and municipal commissions. A pres- 
ident of his Bnai Brith lodge (1917-18), Borinstein directed 
the Jewish Welfare Fund and managed Indiana campaigns 
of the United Jewish Appeal and the American Jewish Joint 
Distribution Committee. He served as a trustee of the Cleve- 
land Orphan Home (from 1919) and director of the National 

Hospital in Denver. 

[Edward L. Greenstein] 

BORIS, RUTHANNA (1918- ), U.S. dancer and choreog- 
rapher. Boris studied ballet at the Metropolitan opera bal- 
let school where she made her debut in Carmen, in 1935, and 
was prima ballerina from 1937 to 1942. She performed a wide 
range of classical and contemporary ballet roles as soloist and 
principal dancer for the Ballets Russes (1943-1950) and also 
choreographed for them Cirque des deux (1947) and Quelques 
fleurs (1948). Her choreography, showing a gift for comedy, in- 
cluded Cakewalk (1951), created for the New York City Ballet, 
and she danced for the Broadway musical Two on the Aisle. 
She was director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, 1956-1957, 
and from 1965 she was professor of dance at the University 
of Washington. 

bibliography: International Encyclopedia of Dance, vol. 1 
(1998), 498. 

[Amnon Shiloah (2 nd ed.)] 

BORISLAV (Pol. Boryslaw), city in Ukraine (until 1939, Gali- 
cia, Poland). Borislav, which at the end of the 19 th century was 
nicknamed the "California of Galicia," in 1920 supplied 75% of 
the oil in Poland. The industry was pioneered by Jews. Around 
1880 the numerous wells they founded employed about 3,000 
Jewish workers from Borislav and the vicinity. At this time, 
large Austrian and foreign banks, subsidizing modern tech- 
niques, began to squeeze out smaller enterprises and Jewish 



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BORISOV 



labor, although a number of wells were still Jewish-owned. 
In 1898 some of the unemployed workers petitioned the Sec- 
ond Zionist Congress to grant them the means to immigrate 
to Erez Israel. At the request of Theodor Herzl, the Alliance 
Israelite Universelle assisted approximately 500 workers to 
leave for the United States. The Jewish community of Borislav 
had been affiliated with the *Drogobych kehillah and became 
independent in 1928. From 1867 to 1903 Borislav formed part 
of an Austrian parliamentary electoral district in which the 
majority of the constituents were Jewish. In 1887 the first so- 
ciety of Hovevei Zion was established in Borislav. In i860 the 
Jewish population of Borislav numbered about 1,000; in 1890, 
9,047 (out of a total of 10,424); in 1910, 5,753 (out of 12,767); in 
1921, 7,170 (out of 16,000); and in 1939 over 13,000. 

[Nathan Michael Gelber] 

Holocaust and Postwar Periods 

When the town came under Soviet administration in 1939, 
the Jewish institutions were disbanded and political parties 
ceased to function. Jewish merchants were forced out of busi- 
ness, while artisans were organized into cooperatives. Refu- 
gees from western Poland were deported from Borislav to the 
Soviet interior in the summer of 1940. When the war with 
Germany broke out (June 1941), many young Jews joined the 
Soviet army, and others fled with the retreating Soviet authori- 
ties. The town fell to the Germans on July 1, 1941, and the fol- 
lowing day the Ukrainians staged a pogrom against the Jew- 
ish community, killing more than 300 Jews. A *Judenrat was 
set up, headed by Michael Herz. The first Aktion took place 
on November 29-30, 1941, when 1,500 Jews were murdered 
in the forests of two neighboring villages. The following win- 
ter (1941-42), hunger and disease made inroads on the Jewish 
community. In 1942 able-bodied Jews were sent to the labor 
camps of Popiele, *Skole, and *Stryj, and in August 1942 about 
5,000 Jews were sent to the *Belzec death camp. Two sepa- 
rate ghettos were established, followed by a series of round- 
ups in which hundreds were sent to Belzec. Toward the end 
of 1942 a special labor camp was established in Borislav for 
the oil industries. The extermination of the Jewish commu- 
nity continued with the execution, at the city slaughterhouse, 
on February 16-17, !943> of some 600 women, children, and 
elderly people. During May- August 1943 the remaining Jews 
were killed and only some 1,500 slave laborers were tempo- 
rarily spared. Jews who tried to hide in the forests and in the 
city itself were mostly caught and killed by the Germans, with 
the cooperation of local Ukrainians belonging mostly to the 
bands of Stefan Bandera. In April- July 1944 the local labor 
camp was liquidated and the last surviving members of the 
Jewish community were brought to *Plaszow labor camp, from 
where they were transported to death or concentration camps 
in Germany. There were resistance groups among the young 
Jews of Borislav, but the only detail known about them is the 
fact that one of their leaders, Lonek Hofman, was killed while 
attempting to assault a German foreman. When Soviet forces 
took Borislav on August 7, 1944, some 200 Jewish survivors 



were found in the forests and in local hideouts. Another 200 
Jews later returned from the Soviet Union and from German 
concentration camps. A monument was erected to the Jews 
who fell in World War 11 but was allowed to fall into disre- 
pair. The Jewish cemetery was closed down in 1959. In 1970 
the number of Jews in Borislav was estimated at 3,000. There 
was no synagogue. Most of the Jews left in the large-scale emi- 
gration of the 1990s. 

[Aharon Weiss] 

bibliography: Gelber, in: Sefer Drohobycz ve-ha-Sevivah 
(1959), 171-6; K. Holzman, Be-Ein Elohim (1956); T. Brustin-Beren- 
stein in: Bleter far Geshikhte, 6, no. 3 (1953), 45-100; Sefer Zikkaron 
le-Drohobiz, Borislav, ve-ha-Sevivah (1959), Heb. with Yid. 

BORISOV, town in Minsk district, Belarus. Jews were living 
there in the 17 th century; 249 Jewish taxpayers are recorded 
in Borisov in 1776. The main Jewish occupations were trade 
in grain and timber, sent northward by river to Riga via the 
Dvina and to southern Russia via the Dnieper. Jews owned 
all the towns match factories, most of whose workers were 
Jewish. Around 1900 Borisov became a center of Bund ac- 
tivity. The Jewish population numbered 2,851 in 1861; 7,722 in 
i897 (54.2% of the total); and 10,617 on the outbreak of World 
War 1, subsequently decreasing to 8,358 (32.3%) by 1926. In the 
summer of 1920 Polish soldiers staged a pogrom, killing and 
injuring 300 Jews. During the Soviet period many Jews were 
employed in artisan cooperatives and factories. In 1939 there 
were 10,011 Jews (total population 49,108). The Germans en- 
tered Borisov on July 2, 1941. In August, 739 Jews were mur- 
dered, followed by 439 being labeled as "robbers and sabo- 
teurs." Another 176 were murdered for opposing the creation 
of a closed ghetto, where about 7,000 Jews were packed in. 
On October 20-21, 1941 (October 7-9 according to another 
source), over 7,000 Jews were murdered at the airport. In Oc- 
tober 1943 the Germans opened the mass graves nearby and 
burned the bodies. 

bibliography: Lipkind, in: Keneset ha-Gedolah, 1 (1890), 
26-32; Eisenstadt, in: Bleter far Geshikhte, 9 (1956), 45-70; Office 
of U.S. Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi 
Conspiracy and Aggression, 5 (1946), 772-6. add. bibliography: 
Jewish Life, s.v. 

[Simha Katz and Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

BORISOV, ANDREY YAKOVLEVICH (1903-1942), Rus- 
sian Orientalist. Borisov made important contributions to the 
history of medieval Jewish philosophy. Among the genizah 
manuscripts preserved in Leningrad, he discovered manu- 
scripts of Isaac Israeli and the Karaite Yusuf al-Basir. His 
works include an article on the tractate Ma am al-Nafs y the 
so-called Pseudo-Bahya (in the USSR Academy of Sciences, 
Izvestiya (Otdeleniye obshchestvennykh nauk; 1929), 775-97), 
and on Moses ibn Ezras poetry (ibid., no. 4 (1933), 99-117). 
He also wrote shorter articles on problems in medieval Jew- 
ish literary history. 

[Samuel Miklos Stern] 



86 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BORNSTEIN, ELI 



°BORMANN, MARTIN (1900-?), Nazi leader. Bormann 
was born in Halberstadt; his family were postal workers. 
He enlisted in World War 1 but too late to reach the front. 
He joined the Nazi Party in 1925, after having been active 
in right-wing organizations and having been sentenced to a 
year in prison. In 1926 he was appointed head of Nazi press 
affairs and deputy regional commander of the sa. In 1928 
he became party treasurer in Munich. By 1933, when he was 
elected to the Reichstag, he had become chief of staff to Ru- 
dolf Hess, Hitlers deputy. In May 1941 he replaced Hess, who 
had flown to London, as administrative head of the Party 
chancellery, which gave him control over Hitlers schedule 
and thus considerable power. He was active in the Euthanasia 
program, in the struggle with the churches, and the seizing 
of art work in the occupied territories. By a decree of Jan. 24, 
1942, Bormann was given control over all laws and directives 
issued by Hitler. As the Fuhrer became preoccupied with the 
war, Bormann gained considerable control over domestic af- 
fairs in Germany. His representatives participated both at the 
*Wannsee Conference on Jan. 20, 1942, and at the March 6, 
1942, conference that dealt with the fate of Jewish partners in 
mixed marriages and their offspring. According to the judg- 
ment of the International Military Tribunal, Bormann took 
part in the discussions which led to the removal of 60,000 
Jews from Vienna to Poland, signing the order of Oct. 9, 1942, 
in which he declared that the elimination of Jews from Greater 
Germany could be solved only by applying "ruthless force" in 
the special camps in the East. On July 1, 1943, he cosigned an 
ordinance withdrawing Jews who violated the law from the 
jurisdiction of the courts and placing them under the juris- 
diction of the Gestapo. Goering included him in the group of 
five "real conspirators" along with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, 
and Heydrich. He was with Hitler until the end, witnessing 
his marriage to Eva Braun and the suicide of Goebbels and his 
family, and even informing Admiral Donitz that he had been 
appointed the Fuehrer. He even attempted to conduct nego- 
tiations with the Soviet Union and then disappeared. In 1946 
Bormann, who was the "Grey Eminence" of the Third Reich, 
was sentenced to death in absentia by the International Mili- 
tary Tribunal at Nuremberg. His exact whereabouts after the 
war remained unknown. The attorney-general of Frankfurt 
opened a case against Bormann and a reward of 100,000 dm 
was posted for information leading to his arrest. In 1973 the 
West German government accepted the report of a forensic 
expert who examined a body purported to be Martin Bor- 
mann s and declared him dead. 

bibliography: Office of U.S. Chief of Counsel for Prosecu- 
tion of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 2 (1946), 
896-915; H.R. Trevor-Roper, Bormann Letters (1954); J. Wulf, Mar- 
tin Bormann: Hitlers Schatten (1962); J. Mc-Govern, Martin Bormann 
(Eng., 1968). 

[Yehuda Reshef / Michael Berenbaum (2 nd ed.)] 



Breslau and lectured on physics in Berlin (1915), Frankfurt 
(1919), and Goettingen (1921). Although he had dissociated 
himself from the Jewish community, Born was dismissed from 
Goettingen in 1933 because of his Jewish origins. He settled 
in England working first at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cam- 
bridge, and then from 1936 lecturing in applied mathematics 
at Edinburgh University. On his retirement from teaching in 
1953, he returned to Germany. 

Born played an important role in the development of 
modern theoretical physics. He developed the modern math- 
ematical explanation of the basic properties of matter but his 
outstanding achievement was his work on quantum theory 
and the use of matrix computations. He was the first to rec- 
ognize that the function of Schroedinger s waves could be ex- 
plained as a statistical function which describes the probability 
of a certain behavior of a solitary molecule in space and time. 
He examined the problems of probability and wrote a num- 
ber of books on physics, including Aufbau der Materie (1922 2 ), 
Atomtheorie desfesten Zustandes (1923) , Atommechanik (1925), 
Moderne Physik (1933), Atomic Physics (1947 4 ), and A General 
Kinetic Theory of Liquids (1949). Born was also concerned with 
the general philosophical problems of natural science, an in- 
terest reflected in his works The Restless Universe (1936) and 
Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (1949). His discus- 
sion with *Einstein (a close friend of his) on the meaning of 
cause and chance in modern science was summarized in his 
article "Physics and Metaphysics" (published in Penguin Sci- 
ence News, 17 (1950), 9-27). In 1954, Born and W. Bothe were 
awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for their work on the 
mathematical basis of quantum mechanics. Eight of Born's 
essays, revealing his enduring interest in the ethical problems 
underlying mans vast increase in power through science, were 
published in 1968 as My Life and My Views. 

bibliography: H. Vogel, Physik und Philosophie bei Max 
Born (1968). 

[Maurice Goldsmith] 

BORNFRIEND, JACOB (Jakub Bauernfreund; 1904-1976), 
painter. Bornfriend was born in a Slovak village. Exposed to 
the art movements of the period between the two world wars, 
Bornfriend tried and then abandoned impressionism, cub- 
ism, and surrealism. He attained a fair standard in each with- 
out finding an individual style. In 1939 Bornfriend escaped 
to England and worked in factories for six years. He returned 
to his easel with a personality of his own, combining the for- 
mal influence of Picasso with the spiritual influence of Jankel 
*Adler. Bornfriend retained the warmth and bright colors of 
his early life, combining a sense of strict laws of form with a 
deep feeling for human pathos. 

bibliography: Garrett, in: Studio, 145 (1953), 160-3; Roth, 
Art, 831-3. 

[Avigdor Dagan] 



BORN, MAX (1882-1970), German physicist and Nobel Prize 
winner. A son of the anatomist Gustav Born, he was born in 



BORNSTEIN, ELI (1922- ), Canadian artist. Born in Mil- 
waukee, Wisconsin, Bornstein studied in the United States 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



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BORNSTEIN, HAYYIM JEHIEL 



and with Fernand Leger in Paris. He went to Canada in 1950, 
and later became head of the department of art at the Univer- 
sity of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. Bornstein headed the struc- 
turist school, which was centered in Saskatoon, and edited 
its magazine The Structurist. The structurists created a pure, 
geometric abstract form of art which they felt to be a devel- 
opment of the tradition of Cezanne and the cubists. Their fa- 
vorite art form was the structurist relief, "a new synthesis of 
the color of painting and the actual form and space of sculp- 
ture." Bornstein received many commissions to execute such 
reliefs for public buildings and created one in five parts for 
an exhibition commemorating the centenary of the Canadian 
Confederation in 1967. 

[Yael Dunkelman] 

BORNSTEIN, HAYYIM JEHIEL (1845-1928), authority 
on the Jewish calendar. Bornstein was born into a hasidic fam- 
ily in Kozienice, receiving a traditional Jewish education and 
studying European languages and secular subjects, especially 
mathematics, on his own. He worked as an accountant in a 
sugar factory in the village of Manishev and then settled in 
Warsaw in 1881. From 1886 on he was secretary of the syna- 
gogue in Warsaw. Bornsteins knowledge of chronology, his- 
tory, and mathematics enabled him to open new avenues in 
the study of the development of the Jewish calendar. He based 
his theories on several documents in the Cairo Genizah y the 
importance of which he was the first to recognize. Bornstein 
advanced the novel claim that the details of the Jewish calen- 
dar, with its small cycle of 19 lunar years and its method of 
reckoning the conjunction of the planets, had not been cal- 
culated and accepted until sometime between the mid-eighth 
and mid-ninth century c.e., and not in the period of the amo- 
raim under *Hillel 11, as had been generally believed - much 
less in the first century c.e., as claimed by the German chro- 
nologist F.K. Ginzel. Bornstein published "Parashat ha-Ib- 
bur" (Ha-Kererriy 1887), "Mahaloket Rav Saadyah Gabn u-Ven 
Meir bi-Keviat Shenot 4672-4674" (Sefer ha-Yovel Li-khevod 
Nahum Sokolov, 1904), "Taarikhei Yisrael" (Ha-Tekufah y 1921, 
nos. 8, 9), and "Heshbon Shematim ve-Yovelot" (ibid. y no. 11). 
M. Teitelbaums study of *Shneur Zalman of Lyady incorpo- 
rated an appendix by Bornstein on Shneur Zalmans knowl- 
edge of geometry, astronomy, and natural science. Bornstein 
also translated several classics of general literature into He- 
brew, among them the Polish poet Adam Mickiewiczs Farys 
(in N. Sokolow (ed.), Sefer ha-Shanah (1900), 326-34), and 
Shakespeare's Hamlet (1926). 

bibliography: A.M. Habermann, in: S.K. Mirsky (ed.), 
Ishim u-Demuyyot be-Hokhmat Yisrael be-Eiropah ha-Mizrahit Lifnei 
Shekiatah (1959), 137-244; N. Sokolow, Sefer Zikkaron (1889); idem, 
in: Ha-Tekufah, 25 (1929), 528; idem, Ishim (1958), 101-43; Ha-Sifrut 
ha-Yafah be-Ivrit (1927); A.A. Akaviah, in: Z.H. Yafeh (ed.), Korot 
Heshbon ha-Ibbur (1931), introduction. 

[Abraham Halevy Fraenkel] 



BOROCHOV, BER (Dov; 1881-1917), Socialist Zionist leader 
and foremost theoretician; scholar of the history, economic 
structure, language, and culture of the Jewish people. A bril- 
liant analyst, in debate as well as in writing, Borochov influ- 
enced wide circles of the emerging Jewish labor movement, 
first in Russia, later in Central and Western Europe and the 
U.S. He postulated the concept of an organic unity between 
scientific socialism and devotion to the national needs of the 
Jewish people. He thus freed many young Jewish intellectuals 
from their preoccupation with the seemingly irreconcilable 
contradiction between social revolution and Zionism. Boro- 
chov s main theoretical contribution was his synthesis of class 
struggle and nationalism, at a time when prevalent Marxist 
theory rejected all nationalism, and particularly Jewish na- 
tionalism, as distinctly reactionary. Borochov regarded the 
mass migration of Jews in his time as an inevitable elemental 
social phenomenon, expressing the inner drive of the Jewish 
proletariat to seek a solution to the problem of its precarious 
existence in the Diaspora, where it is uprooted and separated 
from the basic processes of production. The task of Socialist 
Zionism, Borochov maintained, was to prepare "a new ter- 
ritory," i.e., Erez Israel, through a pioneering effort, for the 
concentration of the masses of Jewish migrants. This would 
prevent the perpetuation of the Diaspora through continued 
dispersion in alien lands and economies, creating instead a 
Jewish national economic body as a framework for the natu- 
ral class struggle of the Jewish proletariat. 

Biography 

Borochov was born in Zolotonosha, Ukraine, and grew up in 
Poltava, where he was educated in a Russian high school. A 
studious youth, he early displayed a tendency toward philo- 
sophic thought and was influenced by the revolutionary so- 
cialist trends of his period. Like most Jewish high school grad- 
uates, he was denied entrance to a Russian university, which 
in any case he rejected as alien to his spirit, and embarked on 
a strenuous process of self-education. He gained erudition 
in various fields and fluency in several languages. Borochov 
joined the ranks of the Russian Social Democratic Party, but 
his interests in specifically Jewish problems led him, in 1901, 
to establish the Zionist Socialist Workers Union at Yekateri- 
noslav. The association, which was active in organizing Jewish 
self-defense and in promoting the interests of Jewish workers, 
was opposed by both the Russian Social Democrats (who re- 
fused to recognize the need for an independent Jewish work- 
ers* movement) and some Zionist leaders (who disliked the 
association of Zionism with socialism). 

During the controversy in the Zionist movement about 
the Uganda Scheme, Borochov took a clear-cut "Palestinist" 
stand and cooperated closely with Menahem *Ussishkin and 
other leaders of the "Zion Zionists" who opposed any *territo- 
rialism other than in Erez Israel. Borochov traveled through- 
out Russia to convince the newly founded groups of *Poalei 
Zion against territorialist tendencies, which seemed to be 



88 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOROCHOV, BER 



gaining increasing influence in Socialist Zionism. He was a 
delegate to the Seventh Zionist Congress (1905), leading the 
faction of those Poalei Zion delegates who were "faithful to 
Zion." During the ensuing debates among Socialist-Zionists 
over the territorial issue, the political struggle in the Diaspora, 
and Sejmism, it was largely Borochov who laid the ideologi- 
cal and organizational foundations of the Poalei Zion move- 
ment. At a conference in Poltava (1906), the movement was 
renamed the "Jewish Workers' Social Democratic Party Poalei 
Zion." Borochov crystallized its doctrine in his treatise "Our 
Platform" (published as a series in the Poalei Zion Party or- 
gan Yevreyskaya Rabochaya Khronika from July 1906) and in 
supplementary articles and debates with other trends in the 
Jewish labor movement over the role of the Jewish proletariat 
and the national problem. In 1907, during the Eighth Zionist 
Congress at The Hague, Borochov participated in the found- 
ing of the World Union of Poalei Zion, as a separate union 
(Sonderverband) in the World Zionist Organization. After the 
Eighth Zionist Congress, Borochov insisted on the withdrawal 
of Russian Poalei Zion from the Zionist Organization in order 
to preserve the proletarian independence of Socialist Zionism. 
From 1907, when he left Russia, until the outbreak of World 
War 1, Borochov worked as a publicist to further the aims of 
the World Union of Po alei Zion in Western and Central Eu- 
rope. He continued his philosophical studies and research into 
Yiddish language and literature. He left Vienna in 1914 and ar- 
rived in the U.S., where he continued his activities as a spokes- 
man for the American Poalei Zion as well as for the World 
and American Jewish Congress movements. He was also edi- 
tor of and contributor to the New York Yiddish daily Di War- 
heit. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Borochov 
returned to Russia, stopping en route in Stockholm to join the 
Poalei Zion delegation at a session of an international Social- 
ist Commission of neutral countries. There he helped formu- 
late the demands of the Jewish people and working class in 
the manifesto for the postwar world order. When he arrived 
in Russia, Borochov became intensely involved in public ac- 
tivity during the stormy period before the October Revolu- 
tion. In August 1917, in an address to the Russian Poalei Zion 
Conference, Borochov called for socialist settlement in Erez 
Israel. In September 1917, he read a paper to the "Congress of 
Nations" in Kiev on "Russia as a Commonwealth of Nations." 
In the course of a speaking tour he contracted pneumonia 
and died in Kiev. His remains were taken to Israel in 1963 for 
reinterment at the Kinneret cemetery, alongside the graves of 
other founders of Socialist Zionism. A workers' quarter near 
Tel Aviv, Shekhunat Borochov, now part of the township of 
Givatayim, was named after him. 

Theory 

Borochov's Socialist Zionist credo was never dogmatic, 
parochial, or static; it was universal and dynamic, the evolv- 
ing product of continuous inquiry and study. In an attempt 
to analyze the Jewish situation and its problem along Marx- 



ist ideological and methodological lines, Borochov sought 
to probe "beyond the cultural and spiritual manifestations 
and to examine the deeper concealed foundations of the Jew- 
ish problem." The root of the problem, Borochov said, was 
the divorce of the Jewish people from its homeland. He con- 
sidered a people "without a country, without an independent 
economic basis, and trapped in alien economic relations" to 
be a powerless national minority. The Diaspora was respon- 
sible for the fact that the "social physiology of the Jewish peo- 
ple is organically sick." It created the historic conditions in 
which Jewry was torn between the process of assimilation into, 
and the isolation from, the host society. The Diaspora had thus 
divided Jewry's strength, and, because of the ultimate preva- 
lence of "alienating forces," exacerbated the tension between 
Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. The growing Jewish 
migration, while providing relief, was also testimony to Jew- 
ry's prolonged and aching conflict between ends and avail- 
able means. The Jewish worker in the Diaspora occupied a 
particularly anomalous position. Since he lived in an econ- 
omy in which petty, backward production predominated and 
was denied work in the modern, heavy industry, he had a 
narrow labor front and an abnormal, insufficient "strategic 
base" for his class struggle. As long as the Jewish economy 
was detached from those vital branches of production, which 
are "the axis of the historical wheel," the proletarization of 
the Jews would continue to be a slow, stunted, and uneven 
process. 

In denning the Jewish problem, Borochov, while keenly 
aware of the constant threat of antisemitic outbursts in the 
Diaspora, never designated antisemitism as the fundamental 
basis or motivation of Zionism. He chose to view the whole 
of the Diaspora as a social aberration, reducing the Jews to 
a permanent state of economic inferiority and political help- 
lessness. Thus, when proposing a solution to the problem, 
Borochov refused to believe that civil emancipation in the 
Diaspora, whether in a capitalist or socialist society, could, in 
itself, solve the Jewish problem. "Even when the State of Free- 
dom will be established - and counterrevolution will be only a 
memory - the Jewish problem will still have to wait a long time 
for a specific answer." Assimilation, which Borochov attacked 
both theoretically and practically, was no less an anathema, 
whether in its bourgeois inception or in later socialist forms. 
The origins of assimilation - the mute antagonism between 
the successful individual and his miserable people - made it 
morally suspect, and an objective impossibility - the insur- 
mountable objection of non-Jewish society - made it a dan- 
gerous daydream. Instead, the solution Borochov envisaged 
was a unique one, addressed to the particular needs of the 
Jews: only auto-emancipation, i.e., national self- liberation, 
could restore "to Jewish existence a healthy socio-economic 
basis, which is the keystone of national existence and national 
culture and the basis for a fruitful class struggle and social- 
ist transformation of national life." This, he believed, was the 
Jewish people's particular road to socialist internationalism, a 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



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BOROCHOV, BER 



development which would herald the inevitable exodus from 
the Diaspora. 

For Borochov, the Jewish renaissance and socialism were 
necessarily mutually interrelated, since Zionism and social- 
ism together served the same purpose - making Jewish life 
productive again. Zionism was necessary because Jewish mi- 
gratory movements disperse the Jewish masses into existing 
societies and economies, thus continuing the traditional Di- 
aspora, instead of concentrating them in their own new ter- 
ritory. The first task, therefore, was to create the conditions 
necessary for an independent, sovereign national life, through 
a new trend in Jewish migration toward a new territory. The 
territory in question was destined to be Erez Israel, Borochov 
said, for "the general pattern of Jewish dynamism" leads to- 
ward an ever-increasing "elemental" (sty chic) migration to 
Erez Israel. But this "elemental" mass migration (both his fol- 
lowers and opponents differed over the exact implications of 
the term) was the culmination of an enterprise which was to 
evolve from an initial pioneering stage in Erez Israel. Thus, a 
positive, socialist, yearning for a pioneering way of life had to 
precede the mere recognition of the negative motives for an 
exodus from the Diaspora. This was the first task - the historic 
national mission - that Borochov assigned to the Jewish work- 
ing class in the realization of Zionism. The Jewish worker was 
to be a "pioneer of the Jewish future," builder of the road to a 
territorial homeland for the whole Jewish people. 

During his contact with the Jewish population in West- 
ern Europe and in the U.S., Borochov broadened many of his 
earlier concepts. Thus, Erez Israel was to be not merely a stra- 
tegic base for the class struggle of the Jewish proletariat, but 
a home for the entire Jewish people. Borochov, increasingly 
aware of the common fate of world Jewry and the universal- 
ity of their problem in the Diaspora, also came to oppose any 
attempts to fragment Jewish history, as well as Jewish demog- 
raphy. He insisted that Jewish history was the chronicle of the 
Jewish masses* uninterrupted sense of self-pride and will to 
struggle. He acknowledged the vulnerability of the Jews and 
analyzed their dangerous position in the face of national re- 
naissance movements on the one hand, and national-social an- 
tisemitism in Europe, which he perceived even before World 
War i, on the other. Yet he remained insistent that future in- 
ternational developments also held out hopeful and exciting 
promises for the Jewish people. 

Literary Works 

Borochovs literary efforts began in 1902 with a treatise "On the 
Nature of the Jewish Mind," published in Russian in a Zionist 
almanac. His 1905 article on "The Question of Zionist Theory," 
published in the Russian Zionist monthly Yevreyskaya Zhizn, 
decried the attempts of assimilationist Jews to reject Zionism 
and to rely on universal progress as the solution to the Jewish 
problem. Characteristically, Borochov raised the level of his 
polemics against the Uganda Scheme to one of fundamental 
principle, in his Russian treatise "On the Question of Zion and 
Territory" (1905). In it he introduced a materialist-historical 



analysis of the Jewish problem, establishing Zionism as an el- 
emental force produced by Jewry's plight and sustained by its 
pioneering elements, becoming the true national liberation 
movement of the Jewish people. The pamphlet Class Factors 
in the National Question, which he published in the same year, 
was one of the first ventures at applying Marxist theory to the 
national question. Drawing a distinction between the nation- 
alism of oppressed peoples and that of oppressing nations, 
Borochov investigated its expression at various class levels. 
He concluded that only the oppressing nationalism was "re- 
actionary," whereas nationalism of the oppressed did not ob- 
scure class consciousness. On the contrary, this latter nation- 
alism, flourishing among the progressive elements, "impels 
them toward real liberation of the nation, normalization of 
the conditions and relationships of production, and the cre- 
ation of necessary conditions for the true freedom of national 
self-determination." 

Borochovs writings during the 1907-14 period retain 
special value as contributions to contemporary historiogra- 
phy. His thesis on "The Jewish Labor Movement in Figures" 
(published posthumously) is a penetrating and original sta- 
tistical-sociological analysis of the "economic physiology" of 
the Jewish people. One of the central topics of his ideology, 
Jewish migration and its social implications, was treated in a 
brochure published in 1911 in Galicia. He contributed articles 
to the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia on various aspects of Jew- 
ish life and history. He wrote in 1908 "Virtualism and the Reli- 
gious-Ethical Problem in Marxism" (published posthumously 
in 1920), a polemical tract against A. Lunacharsky s "Social- 
ism and Religion." His essays "The Tasks of Jewish Philology" 
(1912-13) and "The Library of the Jewish Philologist" (a bibli- 
ography of 400 years of Yiddish research) marked his place 
among the scholars of Jewish language and culture. Borochovs 
literary works revealed the wide range of his sustained cre- 
ativity. There is a vast literature on Borochov the man, his life, 
and his teachings in Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages. L. 
Levite et al. (eds.), B. Borochov Ketavim, 3 vols. (1955-66) is the 
best edition of his works; of special importance are the notes 
attached to each volume. Also in Hebrew is Z. Shazar (comp.), 
B. Borochov, Ketavim Nivharim (1944). There is a short selec- 
tion in English edited by M. Cohen entitled Nationalism and 
the Class Struggle (1937). In Yiddish there are Po'alei Zion New 
York, Geklibene Shriften D.B. Borochovs (1935); B. Locker (ed.), 
Geklibene Schriften (1928); in German the anthology Klasse 
und Nation: zur Theorie und Praxis des juedischen National- 
ismus (1932) and Sozialismus und Zionismus - eine Synthese: 
Ausgewaehlte Schriften (1932). 

bibliography: Duker, in: M. Cohen (ed.), Nationalism 

and the Class Struggle (1937), 17-55; Shazar, in: B. Borochov Ketavim 

Nivharim (1944), 19-40 (first pagination); Ben-Zvi, ibid., 7-18 (first 

pagination); M.A. Borochov, in: B. Locker (ed.), Geklibene Shriften 

Borochovs (1928), 11-29 (first pagination); Ben-Zvi, ibid., 33-48 (first 

pagination); J. Zerubavel, Ber Borochov, 1 (Yid., 1926); A. Herzberg, 

The Zionist Idea (i960), 352-66; M. Mine, Ber Borochov 1900-Purim 

1906 (1968), Heb. with Eng. summ. 

[Lev Levite] 



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BOROVOY, A. ALAN 



BORODAVKA (Brodavka), ISAAC (i6 th -century), 
tax farmer and merchant living in Brest-Litovsk. A grant 
issued by King Sigismund August in 1560 entitled Boro- 
davka and his associates to collect the duties on goods and 
merchandise passing through Minsk, Vilna, Novgorod, Brest, 
and Grodno for seven years. He was granted the salt mo- 
nopoly for a similar term in 1561 and was permitted to build 
distilleries with a monopoly of production in Bielsk, Narva, 
and Kleszczele; in 1569 the Vilna mint was transferred to 
his control. These concessions excited the envy of Chris- 
tian competitors, who instigated *blood libels against certain 
tax collectors employed by Borodavka. Although the 
charges proved groundless, one of the accused, Bernat Abra- 
movich, paid with his life. The king consequently directed that 
henceforth all such accusations be made before the crown, 
and that those who made false accusations would be pun- 
ished. 

bibliography: Russko-yevreyskiy arkhiv, 2 (1882); 3 (1903), 
index; Regesty i nadpisi (1899). 

BORODIN (Gruzenberg), MICHAEL MARKOVITSCH 

(1884-1951), Russian communist politician. Born in Yanow- 
itski, Belorussia, Borodin joined the Bund in 1901 but left it for 
the Bolshevik party two years later. In 1906 he went to Eng- 
land and in the following year to the U.S., where he became 
a member of the American Socialist Party. Borodin returned 
to Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 and worked for 
the Comintern. In 1922 he left for Britain again and was ar- 
rested in Glasgow. He was sentenced to six months' imprison- 
ment for incitement and was then deported. From 1923 to 1927 
Borodin was an adviser to Sun Yat-Sen, leader of the central 
committee of the Kuomintang, in China, where he was held in 
high esteem. When in 1927 the Kuomintang came under the 
domination of its right wing, led by Chiang Kai-Shek, Borodin 
was arrested and forced to leave the country. He went back to 
Russia to become deputy commissar for labor, but after 1932 
he spent most of his time working as a journalist. He succes- 
sively served as deputy director of the Tass news agency, editor 
in chief of the Soviet Information Bureau, and editor of Mos- 
cow News. In 1951 he fell victim to Stalin's reign of terror and 
was condemned to death. His reputation was posthumously 
rehabilitated in 1956. 

bibliography: Sovetskaya istoricheskaya entsiklopediya, 5 
(1964), 43. 

BOROFSKY, JONATHAN (1942- ). U.S. artist. Borofsky 
was born in Boston. At age eight he began studying art with 
Albert Alcay, a Holocaust survivor. Early questions about the 
number tattooed on Alcay s arm would later influence the sub- 
ject matter of Borofsky's art. Borofsky received a B.F.A. from 
Carnegie Mellon University (1964) and an M.F.A. from Yale 
University (1966). After moving to New York in 1966, Borof- 
sky became interested in Conceptual Art. Since 1969 he has 
been numbering his work. This ongoing project began as a 
stack of paper, but has expanded to all of his creations. These 



coded references to the tattoos of Holocaust inmates now 
reach the millions. 

Borofsky describes his art as autobiographical. His 
dreams became source material in 1973, often including re- 
curring figures such as the Hammering Man, Man with a 
Briefcase, and the Running Man. First appearing around 1973, 
the anxiety-ridden Running Man serves as a surrogate self- 
portrait. Borofsky's 1977 drawing Hitler Dream (no. 2454568) 
shows a Running Man being chased by one of Hitler's soldiers 
accompanied by text that begins "I dreamed that some Hit- 
ler-type person was not allowing everyone to roller-skate in 
public places." This was Borofsky's first overt reference to the 
Holocaust. Since then he has readily identified himself as Jew- 
ish and often uses the Holocaust as a subject. 

His multimedia site-specific installations employ myriad 
images, including drawings, sculptures, and found objects. He 
has had several international solo exhibitions at such venues 
as the Israel Museum (1984) and the Boston Museum of Fine 
Arts (2000). From 1969 to 1977 Borofsky taught at the School 
of Visual Arts in New York. In 1976 he moved to California, 
and since 1977 he has been teaching at the California Institute 
of the Arts in Valencia. 

bibliography:}. Simon, "An Interview with Jonathon Borof- 
sky," in: Art in America, 69/9 (1981), 156-67; M. Rosenthal and R. 
Marshall, Jonathan Borofsky (1984); Z. Amishai-Maisels, Depiction 
and Interpretation (1993). 

[Samantha Baskind (2 nd ed.)] 

BOROVOY, A. ALAN (1932- ), Canadian lawyer, human 
rights activist. Borovoy was born in Toronto, and educated at 
the University of Toronto, where in 1956 he completed a degree 
in law. Active in campus Jewish life, he was vice president of 
the Hillel Foundation and founding editor of its journal. He 
personally experienced the antisemitism that tarnished Cana- 
dian democracy during his childhood. Deeply committed to 
the struggle against antisemitism, Borovoy became convinced 
that "the best way to protect the Jewish people was to promote 
greater justice for all people." In 1959 he became director of the 
Toronto Labour Committee for Human Rights, established by 
the Jewish Labour Committee of Canada, and later of the On- 
tario Labour Committee for Human Rights and the Canadian 
Labour Congress's National Committee for Human Rights. He 
also participated in the Jewish community's Joint Community 
Relations Committee, the body that pioneered Canada's ear- 
liest human rights coalitions. In 1968 he joined the Canadian 
Civil Liberties Association as general counsel, serving as its 
chief spokesperson and earning a reputation as Canada's fore- 
most champion of human rights and civil liberties. 

An eloquent speaker with an engaging sense of humor 
and abiding commitment to exposing injustices, he cam- 
paigned tirelessly for the "bedrock liberal principles" of free- 
dom of expression, equality, and procedural fairness. He was 
prominent in exposing conditions on Native reserves, racial 
discrimination in employment and accommodations and bat- 
tled to halt police misconduct, the involuntary treatment of 



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BOROVOY, SAUL 



psychiatric patients, religious instruction in public schools, in- 
vasion of personal privacy, and other abuses of authority and 
human rights. Abjuring violence or even civil disobedience, 
Borovoy designed, in his words, tactics "to raise hell without 
breaking the law." Through public rallies and marches, briefs 
and delegations dispatched to governments, appearances be- 
fore public inquiries, and above all research and presentation 
of factual evidence documenting unfair practices, his efforts 
led to improved legal protections for all Canadians. He ap- 
peared regularly on television, wrote three books and numer- 
ous articles, and contributed columns to the Jewish Standard, 
the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and other Canadian jour- 
nals. He was visiting lecturer at Dalhousie, Windsor, York, and 
Toronto law schools and the Toronto Faculty of Social Work. 
He received honorary degrees from Queens, York, Toronto, 
and the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Order of Canada 
(1982), the Lord Reading Society Human Rights Award (2003), 
and Carleton University s Kroeger Award for Ethics (2003). 
His book When Freedoms Collide was short-listed for the pres- 
tigious Governor Generals Award in 1988. 

[James Walker (2 nd ed.)] 

BOROVOY, SAUL (1903-1989), Soviet historian dealing 
mainly with the history of Ukrainian and Russian Jewry, as 
well as the financial history of Russia. He was born into a well- 
to-do Odessa family (his father was a lawyer) that was on a 
friendly footing with the city s leading Jewish cultural figures. 
Borovoy graduated from a business college and the univer- 
sity s law faculty, studied at the Archaeological Institute, and 
worked from 1922 at the Jewish academic library. In 1927-30 he 
worked in the central academic library in Odessa, and earned 
his Ph.D. in pedagogy, publishing his thesis on academic li- 
braries in Kiev in 1930. In 1938 he received a Ph.D. in history 
and economics. From 1934 to 1977, apart from the war and 
the 1952-54 period, when he was accused of cosmopolitism 
and dismissed, he was lecturer at the Institute of Economics 
in Odessa. Between the world wars, when the Soviet authori- 
ties encouraged the Marxist approach to Jewish history, Boro- 
voy produced several works on Jewish themes in Ukrainian, 
Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Among his important works 
is "Jewish Farm Colonies in Old Russia" (1928). In his 1940 
work "Descriptions of the History of the Jews in the Ukraine 
in the 16- 18 th Centuries," he argued that during the *Chmiel- 
nicki uprising the Jews were not only victims but also a party 
to the war, the rich siding with the Poles and the poor with 
the Cossacks, a "class approach" thesis rejected by most his- 
torians. After he returned to Odessa in 1944 he wrote about 
the Holocaust of the Jews of Odessa (published only in 1990 
in the Yiddish magazine Sovietish Heimland). After the liq- 
uidation of Jewish culture in 1947-48 Borovoy had to stop 
his research in Jewish history and started dealing with eco- 
nomic-historical problems. He wrote about Russian banks 
in the 17- 18 th centuries, private commercial banks in the 
Ukraine at the end of the 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th 
century, and the economic views of the Decembrists and of 



various writers and poets as expressed in their works (such as 
Pushkin). In the 1960s and 1970s he returned to Jewish his- 
torical problems. He wrote several entries, like Gretz, Dub- 
nov, Pale of Settlement, in the Encyclopedia of History. His 
"History of Jewish Public Thought in the First Half of the 19 th 
Century" remained unpublished. Near the end of his life he 
wrote a letter to Communist Party Secretary Yakovlev criti- 
cizing Romanenkos "Essence of Zionism," which was based 
on Borovoy s own descriptions of the Ukraine in the 17 th cen- 
tury. His memoirs were published in Moscow in 1993 by the 

Jewish University there. 

[Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

BOROVSKY, ALEXANDER (1889-1968), pianist. Born 
in Mitau (Latvia), Borovsky studied first in Moscow with 
Safonov, then at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Esi- 
pova from 1907 until 1912, and in the latter year won the Ru- 
binstein Prize. From 1915 to 1920, he taught master classes at 
the Moscow Conservatory, and then embarked upon a suc- 
cessful international career as a concert pianist. He settled in 
the United States in 1941 and was appointed professor at Bos- 
ton University in 1956. 

BOROWITZ, EUGENE B. (1924- ), U.S. theologian, rabbi, 
leader of liberal Judaism. Raised in Columbus, Ohio, by East- 
ern European immigrant parents of Litvak ancestry, Borowitz 
received his undergraduate degree from Ohio State University 
in 1943, with a focus in philosophy, and subsequently attended 
Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he was ordained 
rabbi in 1948. Following ordination Borowitz initially served a 
congregation in St. Louis and later returned to huc to pursue 
a Ph.D., but with the outbreak of the Korean War he entered 
the Navy and for two years served as a chaplain. At the same 
time, Borowitz worked toward a D.H.L. (Doctor of Hebrew 
Letters) degree in rabbinic literature, which he completed 
with distinction in 1952. He later became founding rabbi of 
the Community Synagogue in Port Washington, New York 
(where he remained active until 2000), and began to pursue a 
Ph.D. in religion from the joint program of Columbia Univer- 
sity and Protestant Union Theological Seminary. After he was 
appointed director of the Religious Education Department of 
the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1957, Borow- 
itz turned toward the field of education proper and earned an 
Ed.D. in 1958 from Columbia University. 

Borowitz understood early on that a new kind of think- 
ing was necessary which could build on the work of the early 
modern German religious thinkers, and yet take the modern 
American Jewish reality seriously. Already in 1965 he wrote 
on the transition from impressionist worship to expressionist 
prayer, representing a relatively early attempt to grapple with 
the impact of existentialism, phenomenology, neo -Ortho doxy, 
and revisionist theology. 

Borowitzs early independent study of Jewish philosophy 
led him, with fellow student and and lifetime friend Arnold 
Jacob *Wolf, to the non- rationalist thought of Martin *Buber 



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BOROWITZ, EUGENE B. 



and Franz *Rosenzweig. While Borowitz was tempted to em- 
brace their religious existentialist positions, and while he was 
attracted to their understanding of the relationship between 
the self and God, he was deeply troubled by Buber s rejection 
of the possibility of absolute knowledge and his overempha- 
sis on the autonomy of the individual independent of any 
uniquely Jewish commanding covenantal relationship with 
God. Borowitz began to develop an understanding of the com- 
manding nature of covenant and was the first to introduce and 
explore the idea of "covenant theology" in 1961. 

Borowitz initially demonstrated his systematic scholar- 
ship with an existentialist theology of Judaism in three books 
published in 1968-69: A New Jewish Theology in the Making, 
A Layman's Guide to Religious Existentialism, and How Can 
A Jew Speak of Faith Today? His most accessible book in this 
area is Choices in Modern Jewish Thought (1995), which out- 
lines the development of Jewish thought from Moses ^Men- 
delssohn through the establishment of the fields of postmod- 
ern and feminist Jewish thought. 

About his early intellectual inquiry, Borowitz wrote: 
"Instead of becoming another confirmed mid-century 
agnostic, I became convinced that only belief could now 
found, even mandate, our strong sense of personal and hu- 
man values." Given the crises of values and lack of moral ab- 
solutes invoked by the horror of the Holocaust, he realized 
that modern thought was deeply in need of a meaningful re- 
vitalization. 

Borowitz was particularly conscious of the impact of the 
Holocaust and the rebirth of Jewish statehood in Israel on 
the psyche of American Jews, yet unlike other modern Jew- 
ish thinkers who put these events at the center of their sys- 
tems, Borowitz began a lengthy process of developing a theol- 
ogy that was uniquely American and which represented their 
"pragmatic aesthetic and a pioneering, even confrontational, 
assault on the status quo." Borowitz has since argued that the 
pivotal issue that shaped a century s Jewish thought has been 
a standing commitment to the "commanding power of eth- 
ics" and not any issue resulting from the Holocaust or the es- 
tablishment of the Jewish state. 

Borowitzs commitment to human values, from the per- 
spective of Jewish texts, led him to develop his thinking spe- 
cifically about the nature of Jewish ethics. As part of his ef- 
forts to go beyond the work of Buber and Rosenzweig he 
identified, in his essay "A Life of Jewish Learning," "the prob- 
lem of a theology oi'halakhah] of what non-Orthodox Jews 
believed that should impel them to observe more than, as we 
still called it then, the Moral Law." Borowitz also widened his 
understanding of theology to include the larger claim that, in 
general, Jewish theology is Judaisms "meta-halakhah, the be- 
lief which impels and guides our duties." He candidly wrote: 
"We know we are commanded but . ..we have no widespread 
understanding of Who or What authoritatively commands us, 
and how such a thing is possible . . ." 

His own commitment to ethical response as a Jewish 
duty compelled Borowitz to engage in social action, which 



for many liberal rabbis was often the most natural expression 
of a liberal Jewish commitment to universal ethics. In 1964, 
Borowitz went with several rabbis join Martin Luther King, 
Jr., in St. Augustine, Florida, at a demonstration for civil rights 
following Kings appeal to the ccar conference. After 15 rabbis 
were arrested for praying as an integrated group, they asked 
Borowitz to write up from the notes of the rabbis* conversa- 
tion in jail why they went, which later was a front page story 
in the New York Times. 

Borowitz further developed the idea of covenant theol- 
ogy in his most comprehensive work on theology, Renewing 
the Covenant (1991). He identified a postmodern theology as 
that in which the Jewish people renews its Covenant with God 
in a way which compels each of us to live a Judaism in which 
liberalism and the categories of traditional practice created 
by rabbinic Judaism are complementary rather than compet- 
ing modes of thought. 

Much of Borowitzs work concerns itself with the di- 
lemma of the postmodern Jew: committed to autonomy but 
necessarily involved with God, Torah, and Israel. Borowitz 
writes: "The postmodern search for a substitute absolute be- 
gan as it became clear that modernity had betrayed our faith. 
Repelled by the social disarray and moral anarchy around us, 
we are attracted by systems - which provided clear cut, au- 
thoritative direction, in other words, which offer a strong, at 
least strongish, Absolute." "I believe," writes Borowitz in the 
autobiographical essay "A Life of Jewish Learning," that "we 
come to God these days primarily as the ground of our values 
and, in a non-Orthodox but nonetheless compelling fashion, 
as the commander* of our way of life." 

From 1962, Borowitz taught Jewish philosophy and the- 
ology at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Re- 
ligion in New York, huc-jir awarded him the title Distin- 
guished University Professor, the first time it was awarded 
at an American Jewish seminary. Borowitz was also awarded 
several prizes, including the prestigious Lifetime Achievement 
Award in Scholarship of the National Foundation for Jewish 
Culture in 1996. In 2002 the Jewish Publication Society in- 
cluded him in its Scholars of Distinction series with the pub- 
lication of Studies in the Meaning of Judaism, a selection of his 
papers over the course of 50 years. Also among the more than 
17 books that Borowitz wrote are The Mask Jews Wear, which 
received the National Jewish Book Award in 1974 in the field 
of Jewish thought, and an extensive evaluation of the role of 
theology and aggadah in the Talmud in The Talmud's Theo- 
logical Language-Game (2005). In 1970, Borowitz became the 
founding editor and publisher of Sh'ma, a Journal of Jewish 
Responsibility. 

In addition to his work in the fields of modern Jewish 
thought and ethics, Borowitz has engaged directly in Jew- 
ish-Christian theological dialogue from a positive stance, a 
product of both historical- political and historical-religious 
concerns. Since participating in the first formal Jewish-Cath- 
olic Colloquy held in the United States in 1965 and thereafter 
in his book Contemporary Christologies: A Jewish Response 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



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BOROWITZ, SIDNEY 



(1980), Borowitz has sought to preserve full religious dignity 
and honesty in such theological exchanges. 

[Rachel Sabath Beit Halachmi (2 nd ed.)] 

BOROWITZ, SIDNEY (1919- ), U.S. physicist. Borowitz 
was born in New York. He received his masters degree and 
doctorate from New York University and began his academic 
career as an instructor there. Apart from a two-year tutorial in 
quantum electrodynamics at Harvard University with Julian 
*Schwinger (1948-49), after which he returned to New York 
University as assistant professor of physics, he spent his entire 
academic life at nyu, teaching at both the Bronx and Wash- 
ington Square campuses. He became chairman of the depart- 
ment of physics at the Bronx campus in 1961 and dean of the 
University College of Arts and Science in 1969. In April 1972 
he was appointed chancellor and executive vice president of 
the university, the first alumnus of the university to hold the 
dual post since its creation in i960. In 1965 he was awarded 
the John R Kennedy Memorial Fellowship by the Weizmann 
Institute in Israel, spending a year in Rehovot. Borowitz wrote 
some 30 scientific papers and three books. 

[Ruth Rossing (2 nd ed.)] 

°BORROMEO, CARLO (1538-1584), cardinal, archbishop 
of Milan. In the course of his campaign for reform, which 
had firmly impressed itself on the spirit of the Council of 
Trent (1545-63), Borromeo convened a number of provincial 
councils in Milan of which the first (1565) and the fifth (1579) 
in particular passed legislation concerning the Jews. Among 
other provisions, it was stipulated that bishops were to arrange 
that missionary sermons should be delivered to the Jews by 
preachers with knowledge of Hebrew and of Jewish customs. 
Jewish attendance at the sermons was obligatory, the children 
being separated from their parents. Those who then declared 
themselves willing to be baptized would be placed in homes 
for ^catechumens where they would receive the appropriate 
instruction. The fifth council provided that those who had 
already been baptized should be given accommodation in 
homes for neophytes, and imposed a series of special, strictly 
supervised obligations on the new converts to ensure that they 
would remain steadfast in the Catholic faith. 

bibliography: Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, 2 (1910), 

s.v. Charles Borromee; A. Sala, Biografia di S. Carlo Borromeo >, 3 vols. 

(1857-61). 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

BORSA (Rom. Borsa), mountain village in Northern Tran- 
sylvania, Maramures region, Romania; within Hungary before 
1918 and from 1940 to 1944. Jewish communal life had devel- 
oped there by 1751. According to local Hasidic legend, ^Israel 
b. Eliezer Baal Shem Tov visited the village. At the beginning 
of the 19 th century there were nearly 250 Jewish residents. Ha- 
sidism was strong in Borsa. Many Jews there were occupied 
in agriculture, forestry, and lumbering as manual laborers; 
Jews also owned lumber mills and woodworking plants. The 



community numbered 1,432 in 1891 (out of a total population 

of 6,219), i>97 2 hi 191° (out °f 9>33 2 )> an d 2,486 in 1930 (out of 
11,230). On July 4, 1930, the Jewish quarter was destroyed by 
fire - a clear act of arson prompted by the *Iron Guard. 

After the annexation of Northern Transylvania by Hun- 
gary in September 1940, the Jews were subjected to the anti- 
Jewish laws already in effect in Hungary. After the German 
occupation, the Jews were placed in a local ghetto, from which 
they were transferred to the concentration and entrainment 
center of *Viseul-de-Sus (Hg. Felsoviso) together with the Jews 
from the neighboring communities in the district of Viseul- 
de-Sus. The Jews of Borsa were among the approximately 9,100 
Jews who were deported from Viseul-de-Sus in three trans- 
ports on May 19, May 21, and May 25, respectively. Of those 
who returned, 395 were living in Borsa in 1947. Their number 
subsequently decreased, with most emigrating to Israel, and 
only two or three families remained in the 1970s. 

bibliography: D. Schon, in: Uj Kelet, nos. 5382, 5385, 5396, 
5401, 5406 (1966). add. bibliography: R.L. Braham, Politics of 
Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (1994 2 ); pk Romanyah, 95-99- 

[Yehouda Marton / Randolph Braham (2 nd ed.)] 

BORSIPPA, the modern Birs Nimrud, city in Babylonia, 
south of the city of Babylon and the river Euphrates, and con- 
nected with Babylon by the Barsip canal. In medieval times 
it was known as Burs (a similar form occurs in Av. Zar. 11b; 
Kid, 72a). Because of its proximity to Babylon, and possibly 
also on account of its importance, it was sometimes referred 
to by the Babylonians as "the second Babylon." Famous in the 
Hellenistic period for its school of astrologers (Strabo, 16:1,7 
(739)5 cf. also Jos., Apion, 1:15 if.), it had, as late as talmudic 
times, a temple dedicated to Nebo, the deity of the city, which 
was enumerated among the "five temples appointed for idol 
worship" (Av. Zar. 11b). The sages held the ruins of the tower at 
Borsippa to be those of the Tower of Babel (Sanh. 109a; Gen. 
R. 38:11) and the contemporary Babylon to be located on the 
site of the ancient Borsippa (Shab. 36a; Suk. 34a). Benjamin 
of Tudela, who visited the place, relates: "From there (i.e., 
Hillah which is near Babylon) it is four miles to the Tower 
of Babel, which was built of bricks by the generation whose 

language was confounded The length of its foundation is 

about two miles, the breadth of the tower is about forty cu- 
bits, and the length thereof two hundred cubits. At every ten 
cubits* distance there are slopes which go around the tower, 
by which one can ascend to the top. One can see from there 
a view twenty miles in extent, as the land is level. There fell 
fire from heaven into the midst of the tower, which split to its 
very depths." In talmudic times Borsippa had an important 
Jewish population with the most distinguished genealogy of 
all the Babylonian Jews (Kid. 72a). 

bibliography: R. Koldewey, Die Temp el yon Babylon und 
Borsippa (1911); idem, Das wiedererstehende Babylon (1913); F. Hom- 
mel, Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients (1926); 
J. Obermeyer, Landschaft Babylonien (1929), 314-5. 

[Yehoshua M. Grintz] 



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BOSCO, MONIQUE 



BORSOOK, HENRY (1897-1984), U.S. biochemist. He was 
born in London. After working at the University of Toronto 
until 1929, Borsook went to the California Institute of Technol- 
ogy, becoming professor of biochemistry there in 1935. Dur- 
ing World War 11 he served on the War Production Board, 
the Committee on Nutrition in Industry of the National Re- 
search Council, the War Food Administration, and the Food 
and Nutrition Board. His contributions to scientific journals 
were concerned with nutrition, vitamins, amino acids, the 
biosynthesis of proteins, the thermodynamics, energetics, 
and kinetics of metabolic reactions, and erythropoiesis. He 
wrote Vitamins - What They Are and How They Can Benefit 
You (1940); jointly with W Huse, Vitamins For Health (1942); 
and Action Now on the World Food Problem (1968). Borsook 
was vice president of the American Association of Scientific 
Workers. 

bibliography: Food Technology, 12 (Sept. 1958), i8rT. 

[Samuel Aaron Miller] 

BOSAK, MEIR (1912-1992), Hebrew writer. Bosakwas born 
in Cracow, Poland, and studied in Warsaw. During World 
War 11, he was interned in Cracow ghetto and in concentra- 
tion camps. He emigrated to Israel in 1949 and taught in Tel 
Aviv. From 1929 he published articles in Polish and Hebrew 
on the history of Polish Jewry, and wrote essays on Hebrew 
literature and stories and poems. His works include Be-Nogah 
ha-Seneh (1933), Ve-Attah Eini Raatekha (1957), Ba-Rikkud ke- 
Neged ha-Levanah (i960; poems), Ahar Esrim Shanah (1963; 
poems), and Mul Halal u-Demamah (1966); Sulam ve-Rosho 
(1978); Zamarot bi-Tefillah (1984); Rak Demamah po Titpalal 
(1990); Mul Shaar ha-Rahamim (1995), and the collection of 
essays Shorashim ve-Zamarot (1990). 

add. bibliography: Y. Hanani, She-Hazah mi-Besaro 

(1989). 

[Getzel Kressel] 

BOSCHWITZ, RUDOLPH ELI ("Rudy"; 1930- ), U.S. 
senator, businessman. The son of Ely and Lucy (Dawidawicz) 
Boschwitz, Rudy Boschwitz was born in Berlin, where his 
father was a prosperous stockbroker. When Hitler became 
German chancellor in January 1933, the Boschwitzes fled first 
to Czechoslovakia and then to Switzerland, the Netherlands, 
England, and finally, in 1935, the United States. 

Boschwitz received his early education in the public 
schools of New Rochelle, New York. At sixteen, he entered 
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and then 
transferred to New York University, where he earned a B.S. in 
business in 1950 at age 20 and an LL.B. in 1953. Shortly after 
passing the New York bar exam in 1954, Boschwitz served two 
years in the United States Army. After practicing law for two 
years in New York he joined his brothers growing plywood 
business in Wisconsin in 1957. Seven years later, he moved 
on to Minnesota, where he founded his own business, a store 
stocking do-it-yourself building items, paneling, lumber, and 
assorted building items. He called it Plywood Minnesota. By 



the time he was 45, Boschwitz had 67 Plywood Minnesota 
franchises throughout the upper Midwest. 

Boschwitz became a household name by appearing in his 
company's attention -getting, often ridiculous television adver- 
tisements. He became increasingly active in Republican poli- 
tics. In 1978, he successfully ran for the United States Senate. 

Entering the United States Senate in January 1979, Bos- 
chwitz was appointed to the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions, where naturally he devoted his energies to the issue 
of refugees. Boschwitz was easily reelected to a second term 
in 1984. 

During his 16 years in the Senate, Boschwitz was also 
a strong - though not thoroughly uncritical - supporter of 
Israel. He was influential during his second six-year term on 
Capitol Hill as chair of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on 
Near Eastern Affairs as well as chair of the Republican Senate 
Campaign Committee. A Reform Jew, Boschwitz contributed 
heavily to the Lubavitch House in St. Paul and served as state 
chair of the Minneapolis Jewish Fund. Within the Senate, he 
was well known for "playing matchmaker with single Jews on 
his and other Capitol Hill staffs." 

In 1990 Rudy Boschwitz was challenged for reelection 
by Carleton College Professor Paul David * Wellstone. Like 
the conservative Boschwitz, the liberal Wellstone was a Jew. 
The race represented the first time in American history that 
two Jewish candidates had vied for the same Senate seat. 
And despite the fact that Minnesota has a tiny Jewish popu- 
lation - less than 1% of the total - the election hinged in large 
part on the issue of who was the better Jew. In a letter signed 
by 72 of his Jewish supporters, and sent out to Jewish voters, 
Boschwitz scored Wellstone for having married a non-Jewish 
woman and charged that his opponent "took no part in Jew- 
ish affairs and has not raised his children as Jews." The strat- 
egy backfired; Wellstone defeated Boschwitz by nearly 50,000 
votes. Following his defeat, Boschwitz was named President 
George H.W Bushs special emissary to Ethiopia. Boschwitzs 
mission resulted in "Operation Solomon," one of the boldest 
humanitarian airlifts in history; within a single 24-hour pe- 
riod, 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were evacuated to Israel. 

Eager for a rematch against Wellstone, Boschwitz passed 
up running for an open Senate seat - a political rarity - in 
1994. He got what he wanted, but lost by more than 100,000 
votes. In 2005 he was named American ambassador to the 
United Nations Commission on Human Rights. 

bibliography: K.F. Stone, The Congressional Minyan: The 
Jews of Capitol Hill (2000), 38-41. M. Polner, American Jewish Biog- 
raphies (1983), 45-46. 

[Kurt Stone (2 nd ed.)] 

BOSCO, MONIQUE (1927- ), Canadian writer. Bosco was 
born in Vienna and spent her childhood in France, where she 
was educated. She immigrated to Canada in 1948 and attended 
the Universite de Montreal where she obtained her Ph.D. in 
1953, with a thesis on the theme of isolation in the French- 
Canadian novel. After working for many years as a freelance 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



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BOSCOVITCH, ALEXANDER URIYAH 



journalist for Canada's francophone public broadcasting net- 
work and for a number of newspapers and magazines, she ob- 
tained a position in 1963 at the French Studies Department of 
the Universite de Montreal. Her first novel, entitled Un amour 
maladroit, published in Paris in 1961, won the First Novel 
Award in the United States. In 1971 her novel, Lafemme de 
Loth> won the Governor General's Award in Canada and was 
translated in 1975 by John Glassco as Lots Wife. It is the story 
of a mature woman who reminisces about the trajectory of her 
life at the moment when she finds herself suddenly abandoned 
by her lover and in a mood of despair. Bosco has published 
ten other novels, all dealing with the uprooting of emigra- 
tion, feminine isolation, and the bitterness of existence. She 
is also the author of four short-story collections and books of 
poetry. Bosco was awarded the Athanase-David prize in 1996 
in recognition for her life's work. 

[Pierre Anctil (2 nd ed.)] 

BOSCOVITCH, ALEXANDER URIYAH (1907-1964), 
Israeli composer and music critic. Born in Klausenburg (Cluj), 
Romania, Boscovitch studied piano with Hevesi Piroska and 
then, in Vienna with Victor Ebenstein and in Paris with Paul 
*Dukas (composition) and Lazar *Levi (piano). He became 
conductor of the Klausenburg Opera orchestra, and of a Jew- 
ish symphony orchestra (named after Karl Goldmark) which 
he founded. In 1938 he was invited to Palestine for the first per- 
formance of his Sharsheret ha-Zahav ("The Golden Chain"), 
an orchestral suite based on East European Jewish melodies. 
He decided to remain in the country and became one of the 
pioneers of Israeli music - songs, chamber music, music for 
the theater, concertos, and symphonies. Boscovitch was one of 
the founders of the Tel Aviv Academy of Music (1944), where 
he taught theory and composition. In 1956 he became music 
critic of the daily Haaretz. His ideology involved the expec- 
tation that an Israeli composer would avoid any personal Ro- 
mantic expression and derive inspiration from the landscape 
and the Hebrew language, as well as from Arabic. In the early 
1940s he composed four songs for the Yemenite singer Bra- 
cha *Zephira and made arrangements of Arabic instrumental 
music for the dancer Yardena *Cohen. In 1942 he composed a 
violin concerto and the following year an oboe concerto (re- 
vised version 1950) which is typical of his attempt to achieve 
a synthesis of oriental and western forms. His Semitic Suite 
(1946), in two slightly different versions - one for orchestra 
and one for piano solo - was an experiment in transferring 
the tone color of Oriental instruments to western ones. The 
composition drew from the folk music of both the Arabs and 
the Jews in Erez Israel at that time. In 1962 his cantata Bat 
Yisrael ("Daughter of Israel"), based on a text by the poet Bi- 
alik, marked the beginning of his preoccupation with the re- 
lationship between music and the Hebrew language, which is 
evident in Concerto di Camera (1962) for violin and ten other 
instruments. His last complete composition, Adayim, drew its 
inspiration from Exodus 15. This work for flute and orches- 



tra utilizes the rhythmic and poetic characteristics of the He- 
brew text and the liturgy of Yemenite Jews. Boscovitch also 
wrote theater music and songs; his most famous song is Dudu 
(1948) to lyrics by Hayim *Hefer. His writings include Kelet 
es Nyugat Kozott ("The Problems of Jewish Music," 1937) and 
Baayat ha-Musikah ha-Mekorit be-YisraeY ("The Problem of 
Original Music in Israel," 1953). His personal archive is at the 
jnul Music Department. 

add. bibliography: Grove online; mgg 2 ; WY. Elms, Al- 
exander Uriyah Boskovitch (1969); J. Hirshberg and H. Shmueli, Al- 
exander Uriyah Boskovitch, Hayav, Yetzirato, Haguto ("Life, Works, 
Thought," 1995). 

[Herzl Shmueli / Gila Flam and Israela Stein (2 nd ed.)] 

BOSHAL (BOSTAL), MOSES BEN SOLOMON (17 th cen- 
tury), rabbi. Brought to Safed from Sidon by his father when 
he was 12 years old, Moses studied there with important rab- 
bis. At age 25, when forced to leave because of a series of ca- 
lamitous events, Moses moved to Rhodes, becoming a rabbi 
in that community. His only extant work, Yismah Moshe 
(Smyrna, 1675), written after years of preaching every Sabbath 
and holiday, contains several sermons for each Sabbath or fes- 
tival Torah reading. The sermons are primarily commentaries 
on the Torah text, although explanations of midrashic litera- 
ture, which he frequently employed, are also found. From his 
quotations from the Zohar in the introduction to the book - 
where he also includes an autobiography - Moses appears to 
have been familiar with kabbalistic literature. Another unpub- 
lished work, Simhat Moshe, is mentioned in the proofreader's 
introduction to Yismah Moshe. 

bibliography: Zunz, Vortraege, 445; S. Hazzan, Ha-Maalot 
li-Shelomo (1968 2 ), 55b no. 38. 

°BOSHAM, HERBERT DE (before 1139-c. 1194), compan- 
ion and biographer of Archbishop Thomas Becket. Born in 
Bosham, England, he studied in Paris under Peter Lombard, 
and studied Hebrew probably under Andrew of St. Victor. In 
addition to editing the Lombard's (thereafter standard) Great 
Gloss to the Pauline Epistles and to the Psalter, he composed 
(after 1190) a commentary on Jerome's literal Latin translation 
of the Psalms (iuxta Hebraeos). Herbert's work is replete with 
midrashic and other Jewish material taken mainly from Rashi, 
through whom he quotes by name *Menahem b. Jacob Ibn Sa- 
ruq and *Dunash ibn Labrat; but the commentary, which is 
known from a unique manuscript in London (St. Paul's Cathe- 
dral), apparently was ignored until it was rediscovered in the 
20 th century. It is said that his Hebrew studies at times caused 
him to doubt the truth of Christianity. 

bibliography: R. Loewe, in: jhset, 17 (1951-52), 225-49, 
includes bibliography; idem, in: Biblica, 34 (1953), 44-77, 159-92, 
275-98 (Eng.); S. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages 
(1952), index, s.v. Herbert of Bosham. add. bibliography: odnb; 
F. Barlow, Thomas Beckett and His Clerks (1987). 

[Raphael Loewe] 



96 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOSKOVICE 



BOSKOFF, ALVIN (1927- ), U.S. sociologist. Born in New 
York, Boskoff received his Ph.D. from the University of North 
Carolina in 1950. He taught sociology at several universities 
and from 1964 was professor at Emory University in Atlanta, 
Georgia. Boskoff s main interest was the application of gen- 
eral sociological theories to specialized studies with particu- 
lar emphasis on power, decision-making, and processes of 
social change. His theoretical work is embodied in Modern 
Sociological Theory in Continuity and Change (with Howard 
Becker, 1957), Sociology and History (with Werner J. Cahn- 
man, 1964), and in his paper, "Functional Analysis as a Source 
of a Theoretical Repertory and Research Tasks in the Study 
of Social Change," in G.K. Zollschan and W. Hirsh (eds.), 
Explorations in Social Change (1964). Boskoff s own spe- 
cialized research was concerned chiefly with problems of 
the urban community and with political sociology. He also 
wrote The Sociology of Urban Regions: Juvenile Delinquency in 
Norfolk, Virginia (1962), Theory in American Sociology (1969), 
The Mosaic of Sociological Theory (1972), and Sociology: 
The Study of Man in Adaptation (with John T. Doby and Wil- 
liam W Pendleton, 1973). Boskoff was an associate editor of 
the American Sociological Review. In 1979 he served as chair 
of the Theory Council of the American Sociological Associa- 
tion. As professor emeritus at Emory University, his realms 
of interest encompassed sociological theory, comparative ur- 
ban structures, stratification, social change, mass media, and 
lifestyle. 

[Werner J. Cahnman / Ruth Beloff (2 nd ed.)] 

BOSKOVICE (Ger. Boskowitz), town in Moravia, Czech 
Republic. Its Jewish community was one of the oldest and, 
from the 17 th to 19 th centuries, one of the most important. A 
Jewish tombstone there was thought to date from 1069. Jews 
from Boskovice are mentioned in decisions of the Brno mu- 
nicipal high court in 1243. The community began to flourish 
after Jews expelled from Brno in 1454 settled in Boskovice, 
welcomed by the local nobility in the expectation that they 
would make a significant contribution to the economic pros- 
perity and growth of the town. Developing into a famous cen- 
ter of yeshivah studiy, the town attracted talmudic scholars 
from Poland, Germany, and elsewhere. The local population 
was hostile to Jews, however, and attempted to curtail Jewish 
economic activity, but the local congregation was able to ac- 
quire numerous privileges over the centuries. It was able to 
elect its own mayor, write statutes, and establish its own police 
force. In 1565 Jews there owned real estate but were prohibited 
from doing business in the surrounding villages. The statutes 
of the hevra kaddisha were compiled in 1657. There were 26 
Jewish houses in Boskovice in 1676. The synagogue was built 
in 1698, 892 Jewish inhabitants died of the plague in 1715, and 
the Jewish quarter was put in quarantine for a year. A pecu- 
liar custom of the Boskovice community was to bury women 
who died in childbirth in a special section in the cemetery. A 
gabbai was appointed specially for the members of the hevra 



kaddisha who were kohanim. The Jews were segregated in a 
special quarter of the town in 1727. Discrimination against 
Jews ended only in 1848. The small walled ghetto witnessed 
numerous disasters, including fires, plague, and anti-Jewish 
riots. In the 15 th through 18 th centuries, the Jews engaged in 
trade and handicrafts. Among the artisans were producers of 
swords, jewelry, pottery, and glass, as well as tailors, butch- 
ers, and furriers. During the revolution of 1848 Jews in Bos- 
kovice joined the National Guard. A political community (see 
*Politische Gemeinde) was established in Boskovice after 1848 
which became known for its municipal activities, in particular 
its fire brigade (founded in 1863). Toward the end of the 19 th 
century many Jews moved away from Boskovice. Between the 
two world wars Boskovice became a summer resort and was 
frequented by many Jews. 

The community numbered 300 families in 1793; 326 fami- 
lies (1,595 persons) in 1829; 2,018 persons in 1857; 598 in 1900 
(when 116 houses were owned by Jews); and 395 in 1930 (6% 
of the total population), of whom 318 declared their nation- 
ality as Jewish. Boskovice was a noted center of Jewish learn- 
ing. Among rabbis who lived there were Judah Loeb Issachar 
Baer Oppenheim (appointed rabbi in 1704), Nathan Adler 
(1782), who was followed by his disciple Moses *Sofer; Sam- 
uel ha-Levi *Kolin and his son Benjamin Zeev *Boskowitz, 
whose yeshivah made Boskovice celebrated; Abraham *Plac- 
zek, who was Moravian Landesrabbiner from 1851 to 1884; and 
Solomon *Funk. The Zionist president of the Vienna commu- 
nity, Desider *Friedmann, and his non-Zionist deputy Josef 
Ticho, were school friends from Boskovice. Also from Bos- 
kovice were the German writer Hermann Ungar (1893-1929), 
who was part of Franz Kafkas circle, the Jerusalem eye spe- 
cialist Abraham *Ticho, the historian Oskar K. *Rabinowicz, 
and the Brno textile -industrialist *Loew-Beer. Other locally 
born personalities included Moritz Zobel, the Berlin editor 
of the Encyclopedia Judaica, and the choreographer Augustin 
Berger (Razesberger; 1861-1945). The Jews who remained in 
Boskovice after the German occupation (1939) were deported 
to Theresienstadt on March 14-15, 1943, and from there to Tre- 
blinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz. Ritual objects belonging to 
the congregation were sent to the Central Jewish Museum in 
Prague in 1942. Only a few Jews resettled there after the Holo- 
caust, the congregation being administered by the Brno com- 
munity. The Jewish quarter has been preserved, to a large de- 
gree in accordance with its original plan. 

bibliography: Stein, in: Jahrbuch des Traditionstreuen 
Rabbinerverbandes in der Slovakei (1923), 102-34; H. Gold (ed.)> Die 
Juden und Judengemeinden Maehrens... (1929), 123-36; Flesch, in: 
jjlg, 21 (1930), 218-48 (ordinances of the hevra kadisha); I. Reich, 
Die Geschichte der Chewra Kadischa zu Boskowitz (1931); S. Sch- 
reiber, Der dreifache Faden, 1 (1952), 157-9; J-L- Bialer, in: Min ha- 
Genazim, 2 (1969), 63-154 (ordinances of the community). 
add. bibliography: J. Klenovsky, Zidovskd dtvrt' v. Boskov- 
icich (1911); J. Fiedler, Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia (1991), 
46-58. 

[Isaac Zeev Kahane] 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



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BOSKOWITZ, BENJAMIN ZE EV HA-LEVI 



BOSKOWITZ, BENJAMIN ZE'EV (Wolf) HA-LEVI (1740- 
1818), rabbi and author. Named after his birthplace, he was the 
son of Samuel *Kolin, the author of Mahazit ha-Shekel. In 1785 
he was rabbi in Aszod (Pest district), and Prossnitz (Moravia) 
from 1786 to 1790. From there he returned to Alt-Ofen (Buda, 
part of Budapest) where he had previously resided. In 1793 he 
was appointed rabbi of Pest. From 1797 to 1802 he served in 
Balassagyarmat; he then was invited to the rabbinate of *Ko- 
lin (Bohemia), but the government refused him permission 
to settle there because he was by then a Hungarian subject. 
From about 1810 he was rabbi in Bonyhad. 

Boskowitz' glosses on the Babylonian Talmud were first 
printed in the Vienna edition of 1830 and frequently ever since. 
His annotations to Maimonides > Mishneh Torah were partly 
published (to Sefer ha-Madda (Prague, 1820), to Hilkhot Shab- 
bat (Jerusalem, 1902), to Hilkhot Shevitat Asor (1940), and to 
Hilkhot Hamez u-Mazzah (1941)). He also wrote: Maamar 
Esther - sermons on the Bible and aggadah (Ofen, 1822); 
Shoshan Edut y to the tractate Eduyyot (1903-05); and Le-Bin- 
yamin Amar, a commentary on the sayings of *Rabbah b. 
Hana in Bava Batra 73 (ibid. y 1905). Boskowitz corresponded 
with R. Ezekiel Landau of Prague on halakhic problems (cf. 
Noda bi-Yhudah, Mahadurah Tinyanah> oh 25:60, 61, and yd 
14:45, 80, passim). 

bibliography: W. Boskowitz, Shoshan Edut (1903-05), in- 
troduction; J.J. Greenwald (Grunwald), Ha-Yehudim be-Ungarya, 1 
(1912); Freimann, in: jjlg, 15 (1923), 39. 

[Moshe Nahum Zobel] 

BOSKOWITZ, HAYYIM BEN JACOB (18 th century), rabbi 
and author. Little is known of his life, other than that he was 
born in Jerusalem and apparently lived there for many years. 
The evidence for this is that when he traveled abroad, appar- 
ently with the object of publishing his work, he referred to 
himself as "from the holy city of Jerusalem." His work, Tozebt 
Hayyim, homiletical comments on the Pentateuch, with an 
exposition of the moral values to be learned from each verse, 
was published in Amsterdam in 1764. The bibliographer *Ben- 
jacob alone gives the date as 1760. The work was printed, along 
with the Pentateuch, together with the commentaries of Rashi, 
R. Samuel b. Meir (Rashbam), and Abraham ibn Ezra. A new 
edition appeared in Vienna in 1794. Tozebt Hayyim was also 
published without the Pentateuch, but with various additions, 
at Zolkiev in 1772. At the time, Boskowitz was living at Brody, 
Galicia. He seems to have been in Poland as early as 1769, 
when he wrote an approbation Lehem Terumah of Aaron b. 
Isaiah on the Sefer ha-Terumah. 

bibliography: Fuenn, Keneset, 344; Frumkin-Rivlin, 3 

(1929), 83, addenda 45. 

[Itzhak Alfassi] 

BOSNIAK, JACOB (1887-1963), U.S. Conservative rabbi. 
Bosniak was born in Russia, immigrated to the U.S. in 1903, 
and completed his rabbinical studies at the Rabbi Isaac El- 
chanan Yeshivah, an Orthodox seminary, in 1907. In 1917, he 



was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he 
earned a Doctor of Hebrew Letters in 1933. In 1921, after hav- 
ing served Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas, Texas, he 
became rabbi of the Ocean Parkway Jewish Center in Brook- 
lyn, n.y., a congregation he was to serve for 28 years. He was 
president of the Brooklyn Board of Rabbis (1938-40), chair- 
man of the ^Rabbinical Assembly's Rabbinic Ethics Commit- 
tee (1945-48) and a judge (dayyan) and member of the Board 
of Directors of the Jewish Conciliation Board of America. Be- 
lieving in the need for a uniform prayer book (siddur) with 
modern English translations, Bosniak published several prayer 
books that gained wide acceptance in Conservative syna- 
gogues. He edited Prayers of Israel (1925, 19373) and Anthology 
of Prayer (1958), prayer books that included English transla- 
tions of Sabbath and Holiday prayers, English hymns, respon- 
sive readings, and instructions related to worship in English. 
In 1944, he published Interpreting Jewish Life: The Sermons and 
Addresses of Jacob Bosniak. Upon his retirement in 1949, Bos- 
niak was elected rabbi emeritus and devoted his time to Jewish 
scholarship, publishing a critical edition of The Commentary 
of David Kimhi on the Fifth Book of Psalms (1954). 

bibliography: P.S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: 
A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1988). 

[Bezalel Gordon (2 nd ed.)] 

BOSPHORUS, KINGDOM OF, ancient state, independent 
until 110 b.c.e. when it became part of the Roman Empire. 
It is not certain when Jews reached the northern littoral of 
the Black Sea (the Crimea and the shores of the Sea of Azov 
within the boundaries of the Cimmerian Bosphorus), but Jews 
were already living there in the first century, in, among other 
places, the towns of Panticapaecum (now Kerch), Phanagoria, 
and Tanais. It appears that they lived under congenial condi- 
tions. They developed well-organized communities, erected 
synagogues, which served as communal centers, and were 
even organized in the "Thiasoi," characteristic of Hellenistic 
society, by which they were greatly influenced. They, in turn, 
according to all indications, exercised appreciable influence on 
non-Jewish circles, and there is reason to believe that they en- 
gaged in proselytizing activity. The main source of knowledge 
of the Jews of the Bosphorus kingdom is from inscriptions. 
One of the most important, dated 81 c.e., from Panticapaeum, 
reads, "... I, Chreste. .. have manumitted my home-born slave, 
Herakles... who may turn whithersoever he desires... he is 
not however [to forsake] the fear of heaven and attachment to 
the synagogue [Ttpoasuxnl un der the supervision of the com- 
munity [auvaycuyri] of the Jews." In many of the inscriptions 
there appears a formula of oaths beginning, "I swear by Zeus, 
Ge, and Helios." There is a difference of opinion as to whether 
these inscriptions are Jewish. 

bibliography: Schuerer, Gesch, 3 (1909 4 ), 23-24; Goode- 

nough, in: jqr, 47 (1956/57), 221-44; Lifshitz, in: Rivista difilologia, 

92 (1964), 157-62; Bellen, in: Jahrbuch fuer Antike und Christentum, 

8-9 (1965-66), 171-5. 

[Uriel Rappaport] 



98 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOSTON 



°BOSSUET, JACQUES BENIGNE (1627-1704), celebrated 
French preacher. Bossuet was canon in Metz (1652-56), bishop 
of Condom (1669), tutor to the dauphin (1670-81), and bishop 
of Meaux (1681). It was chiefly while living in Metz that he had 
the opportunity to take an interest in the Jews. Many of his 
sermons from this period of residence in Metz were intended 
to further missionary work among the Jews. In his sermon on 
"The Goodness and Severity of God toward Sinners," he em- 
phasized the unhappy state of the Jews, from which, he con- 
sidered, they could free themselves only by becoming con- 
verted to Christianity. He described them as a "monstrous 
people, without hearth or home, without a country and of 
every country; once the happiest in the world, now the laugh- 
ing stock and object of hatred of the whole world; wretched, 
without being pitied for being so, in its misery become, by a 
certain curse, scorned even by the most moderate... we see 
before our eyes the remains of their shipwreck which God 
has thrown, as it were, at our doors." The only success of this 
missionary activity was the conversion of two young broth- 
ers: Charles-Marie de Veil, baptized in 1654, and Lewis Com- 
piegne de *Veil, baptized in 1655. 

bibliography: Kahn, in: Revue Juive de Lorraine, 7 (1931), 
2411!.; E.B. Weill, Weill - De Veil, a Genealogy, 1360-1956 (1957), 24; 
J. Truchet, Predication de Bossuet, 2 (i960), 3 iff. 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

BOSTON, capital and principal city of Massachusetts. The 
Jewish population of Greater Boston was estimated at 254,000 
(2000). 

Early History 

Though Boston is one of the oldest cities in North America, 
having been first settled in 1628, it was not until the mid-i9 th 
century that an organized Jewish community took shape. 
The records of the Great and General Court of Massachu- 
setts Bay show that in 1649 Solomon Franco, a Jew, arrived 
in Boston, was "warned out" by the court, and was supported 
for ten weeks until he could return to Holland. A 1674 tax list 
discloses the presence of two Jews. In 1720 Isaac Lopez was 
elected town constable; he paid a fine rather than serve. Judah 
Monis, who later became a Christian and taught Hebrew at 
Harvard College, arrived in Boston by 1720. Moses Michael 
Hays (1739-1805) arrived there around 1776 and was a well- 
known citizen. He was among the Bank of Bostons original 
stockholders and was instrumental in establishing Masonry 
in New England. There is a tradition that some Algerian Jews 
arrived about 1830 but did not remain. 

The first congregation was Ohabei Shalom, which for- 
mally organized in 1843. It followed Minhag Polin, since a pre- 
ponderance of local Jews came from East and West Prussia, 
Poland, Posen, and Pomerania. In 1844 the Boston City Coun- 
cil, reversing an earlier refusal, permitted the congregation to 
purchase land for a cemetery. That same year, the congrega- 
tion held services in a house and in 1852 its first synagogue 
was dedicated. In 1854 a secession, apparently of the South- 



western German element in Ohabei Shalom, led to the forma- 
tion of a second congregation, Adath Israel (generally known 
as Temple Israel). A third congregation, Mishkan Israel (later 
Mishkan Tefilla), was formed in 1858 largely by immigrants 
from Krotoszyn. Boston Jewry was small and more Polish 
than German, unlike the communities of the Midwest. In 1875, 
the Jewish population was estimated to number only 3,000. 
By 1900, thanks to immigrants from Eastern Europe, it had 
reached 40,000. East European Jews dominated the commu- 
nity by World War 1, when some 80,000-90,000 Jews lived in 
Boston, mostly recent immigrants or their children. 

Population Trends 

The earliest settlers resided in the South End, but from 
the early 1880s growing numbers of East European Jews set- 
tled in the North End. As the immigration from Eastern Eu- 
rope increased, the Jewish community spread over to the West 
End. Both these areas stood at the tip of the peninsula form- 
ing the oldest part of the city. Subsequently, the Jewish com- 
munity spread southward to Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, 
and later to Sharon, westward to Brookline and later to New- 
ton, and northward, across Boston Harbor to Chelsea and 
Maiden. These movements were followed by further disper- 
sion to the outer suburbs and along the shores of Massachu- 
setts Bay, and synagogues were established in those areas. 
In 2004, the core of the Jewish community was in Brook- 
line, Newton, and Sharon, but the community was rapidly 
dispersing to remote suburbs north, south, and west of the 
city. 

The substantial immigration and the subsequent disper- 
sal of the community produced a wide variety of organiza- 
tions. Late i9 th -and 20 th -century Boston was divided between 
the Yankees who controlled its social, cultural, and financial 
institutions, and the Irish who dominated its politics, and this 
did not make it easy for the largely immigrant Jewish group to 
find a recognized place. Anti-Jewish violence peaked in Bos- 
ton during the depression and World War 11, partly inspired 
by Father Charles E. Coughlin and his Christian Front move- 
ment. The city was known as one of the most antisemitic in 
the United States. This changed in the postwar era as Catho- 
lic-Jewish relations improved and Jews departed to safer sub- 
urbs. Whereas at the beginning of the 20 th century there was 
a substantial proletarian element, particularly in the garment 
industry, by 1969 71% of heads of families were in white-col- 
lar occupations. For a time, in the 1960s and 1970s, the larg- 
est group of Jews consisted of transient students, but by 2000 
the community had aged. It nevertheless continues to boast 
the highest proportion of Jewish academics and students of 
any American community. 

Religious Developments 

Religious reform came late to Boston owing to its small Ger- 
man-Jewish population. It developed only in the 1870s when 
Ohabei Shalom and Temple Israel shortened their services 
and introduced choirs and organs. Reform of a more radical 
kind found expression in Temple Israel during the ministry 



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BOSTON 



of Solomon Schindler (1874-93) and was carried further by 
his successor Charles ^Fleischer (1894-1911), who eventually 
left Judaism entirely. Under Harry Levi (1911-39) the congre- 
gation, while continuing Sunday services, returned to the Re- 
form pattern usual in its day and embraced Zionism. Under 
the leadership of Rabbi Herman Rubenovitz, who served dur- 
ing 1910-45, Congregation Mishkan Tefllla became the stan- 
dard-bearer of Conservative Judaism. Rabbi Louis M. Epstein, 
who served Kehillath Israel in Brookline during 1925-48, was 
among the most distinguished scholars in the Conservative 
movement. The immigration from Eastern Europe produced 
many Orthodox congregations, great and small. Among the 
more important were Beth Israel in the North End, Beth Jacob 
and Shaare Jerusalem, both in the West End, and Adath Israel 
(the Blue Hill Avenue Shul) in Roxbury. Among the leading 
Orthodox rabbis were Morris S. Margolies, who served during 
1889-1906, and Gabriel *Margolis, 1907-10. From 1932 to 1993, 
Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. *Soloveitchik, one of the leading figures 
in American Orthodoxy, was identified with the Boston com- 
munity. Levi I. Horowitz (1920- ), reputedly the first Ameri- 
can-born hasidic rebbe, returned to Boston in 1944, succeed- 
ing his father, Pinchas Dovid, who established the Bostoner 
hasidic line in 1915. 

Of some 174 congregations in the Greater Boston area 
and its environs, 53 were Orthodox, 37 Conservative, 34 Re- 
form, 5 Reconstructionist, and 45 other (2001). A survey of 
religious preferences indicated that 3 per cent of the Jewish 
population considered itself Orthodox, 33 per cent Conser- 
vative, 41 per cent Reform, 2 per cent Reconstructionist, and 
20 per cent "other" or no preference. (1995). The Vaad Har- 
abonim of Massachusetts provides kashrut supervision, while 
the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts, created in 1981, seeks 
to "promote and strengthen the synagogue, and to nurture a 
respect for diversity" within the community. 

Charitable Institutions 

The first specifically charitable institution was the United He- 
brew Benevolent Association, founded in 1864. To this were 
added the Hebrew Ladies Sewing Society (organized in 1869 
and revived in 1878), the Hebrew Industrial School (1890), 
the Free Burial Association (1891), and the Hebrew Sheltering 
Home (1891). By 1895 demand far exceeded income, resulting 
in the creation of the Federation of Jewish Charities of Boston, 
the first Jewish federation in the United States, later known 
as the Association of Jewish Philanthropies, later changed to 
Combined Jewish Philanthropies. At first the Federation and 
organized philanthropy made slow headway. Under the lead- 
ership of Louis E. Kirstein (1867-1942) the Federation devel- 
oped considerably and became more comprehensive in its 
appeal. In 1902, against considerable opposition from some 
sections of the Jewish community, the Mt. Sinai Hospital, an 
outpatient clinic, was established in the West End. This was re- 
placed in 1917 by the Beth Israel Hospital in Roxbury, which in 
1928 moved to Brookline Avenue. In 1996, Beth Israel merged 
with New England Deaconess Hospital. 



Schools and Colleges 

In 1858 Congregation Ohabei Shalom established a day school 
for secular and religious subjects, which closed, however, in 
1863. As the community grew, many congregational and other 
schools were founded. A Jewish Education Society was estab- 
lished in 1915. This organization promoted the association of 
Boston Hebrew Schools (1917) and the Bureau of Jewish Re- 
ligious Schools (1918), which merged in 1920 to form the Bu- 
reau of Jewish Education. By 2000, it served as the central 
educational service agency for more than 140 Jewish schools, 
youth groups, summer camps, and adult education programs 
throughout the region, including 14 independent Jewish day 
schools under Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and "trans- 
denominational" auspices. 

In 1921 the Bureau established Hebrew Teachers College 
(later ^Hebrew College), and in 1927 the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts granted the college a charter enabling it to 
confer degrees. At first established in Roxbury, it moved to 
Brookline in 1951 and to Newton in 2001. 

The support given to the Bureau of Jewish Education and 
Hebrew College reflects an interest in Jewish education and 
culture far more extensive than in most communities. Seek- 
ing to "vastly expand Jewish literacy and learning and facili- 
tate a Jewish cultural renaissance," Boston beginning in 1998 
pioneered highly innovative programs in Jewish education, 
and became a national center for Jewish educational initia- 
tives of every sort. Indeed, education - "quality educational 
programming for children, adults, and families" - became 
one of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies' top priorities. 
The engine underlying many of the Jewish educational ad- 
vances in Boston is the areas remarkable community of aca- 
demics who constitute, per capita, the largest number of Jew- 
ish scholars anywhere outside of Israel. In 2004, there were 
approximately 90 dedicated staff positions in Jewish studies 
at seven major private universities in the Boston area, with 
over 30 more similar positions at the colleges in Worcester 
and the Amherst area. 

Boston was an early stronghold of the Zionist move- 
ment. Partly under the influence of Jacob de Haas, who ed- 
ited the Jewish Advocate from 1908 to 1918, Louis D. Brandeis 
assumed a leading role in the movement, and his prestige had 
considerable influence in gaining support for it. By World 
War 11, more than 90 per cent of Boston and New England 
Jews supported Zionism, a record unmatched anywhere in 
the United States. 

In 2000, the Greater Boston metropolitan area, embrac- 
ing large sections of New England, was the sixth largest Jewish 
metropolitan area in the United States, including some 10,500 
Jews from the former Soviet Union, most of whom arrived 
after 1985. More than half of the community's Jews were en- 
gaged in professional and technical work, and 40 per cent of 
Jewish adults held advanced degrees. 

bibliography: M. Axelrod, et al., Community Survey for 
Long Range Planning: A Study of the Jewish Population of Greater Bos- 
ton (1967); S. Broches, Jews in New England, 1 (1942); A. Ehrenfried, 



100 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOTEIN, BERNARD 



Chronicle of Boston Jewry from the Colonial Settlement to 1900 (1963); 
A. Mann (ed.)> Growth and Achievement: Temple Israel, 1854-1954 
( 1 954)> Neusner, in: ajhsq, 46 (1956), 71-85; Reznikoff, in: Commen- 
tary, 15 (1963), 490-9; B.M. Solomon, Pioneers in Service (1956); A.A. 
Wieder, Early Jewish Community of Bostons North End (1962); A. Lib- 
man Lebeson, Jewish Pioneers in America (1931), incl. bibliography. 
Various essays by L.M. Friedman are collected in Early American Jews 
(1934), Jewish Pioneers and Patriots (1942), and Pilgrims in a New Land 
(1948). Descriptions of the life of the immigrant community are given 
in novels by M. Antin: From Polotzk to Boston (1899), The Promised 
Land (1912), and They Who Knock at Our Gates (1914); and in the 
novels of C. Angoff: Journey to the Dawn (1951), In the Morning Light 
(1952), and Between Day and Dark (1959). add. bibliography: 
J.D. Sarna and E. Smith (eds.), The Jews of Boston (1995, 2005) 

[Sefton D. Temkin / Jonathan D. Sarna (2 nd ed.)] 

BOTAREL, MOSES BEN ISAAC (end of i4 th -beginning of 
15 th century), Spanish scholar. After the edicts against Span- 
ish Jewry in 1391, a pseudo-messiah named Moses appeared in 
Burgos. A letter extravagantly praising this Moses is attributed 
to Hasdai * Crescas; it probably refers to Moses Botarel (A. Jell- 
inek, Beit ha-Midr ash, 6 (1877), 141-3). There are extant works 
containing the adverse reactions of opponents to his messi- 
anic pretensions. On the strength of his claims, he circulated 
letters which he introduced with the phrase "Thus says Moses 
Botarel, occupying the seat of instruction in signs and won- 
ders." Botarel wrote books and pamphlets in every branch of 
the Torah, halakhah, Kabbalah, and philosophy. These works 
included many "quotations" of scholarly works from the ge- 
onic period until his day, but most of his quotations were ei- 
ther spurious or copied from sources entirely different from 
those which he named. His reasons for this form of pseude- 
pigraphy are unclear. Certainly it did not stem from a desire 
to enhance the status of kabbalism for he treated purely hal- 
akhic material in the same way. Botarel lived for a long time 
in Avignon, and afterward wandered in France and in Spain. 
He used to boast of his contact with the Christian scholar 
Maestro Juan of Paris, insinuating that at the request of the 
latter he had written a number of his books. His vanity about 
his achievements was limitless and reached pathological pro- 
portions. In 1409 he composed a lengthy commentary on the 
Sefer Yezirah, which was printed in its 1562 edition. His com- 
mentary was notkabbalistic, but combined an eclectic miscel- 
lany of the sayings of others, mainly fabrications, superficial 
in content, with selections from earlier kabbalistic works here 
attributed to nonexistent sources. Apart from a pronounced 
bent toward practical Kabbalah, there is a marked tendency 
to reconcile Kabbalah with philosophy. 

Two other pamphlets on halakhah were published by 
S. Assaf and J. Sussmann. A treatise of similar type on philo- 
sophical matters is found in manuscript (Vatican Ms. 441, fols. 
1 75~9)« An essay on the mystical interpretation of vocalization 
(nekuddot) and related lore is in manuscript in Oxford (Neu- 
bauer, Cat, no. 1947). Part of another kabbalistic work of 1407 
is in manuscript Musaioff, and a collection of writings on prac- 
tical Kabbalah (subsequently entitled Mayan ha-Hokhmah 



or Magelei Yosher) is in manuscript in the Jewish Theological 
Seminary, New York. 

Many of his kabbalistic remedies are included in collec- 
tions of writings of practical Kabbalah. The contemporary 
poet Solomon *Bonafed sharply attacked BotarePs pretensions 
and falsehoods, and hinted at his literary forgeries (Neubauer, 
Cat, no. 1984, 4, fol. 66). His fabrications have also misled 
some scholars who assumed that they were genuine, and uti- 
lized them to reconstruct the origins of Kabbalah. 

bibliography: A. Jellinek, Beitraege zur Geschichte der Kab- 
bala, 2 (1852), 1-10, 79; Steinschneider, Cat Bod, nos. 6440-41; Assaf, 
Tekufat ha-Gebnim ve-Sifrutah (1955), 323-40; G. Scholem, in: Tarbiz, 
32 (1962/63), 260-2; Sussmann, in Kovez al Yad, 6 (1966), 269-342; L. 
Schwager and D. Fraenkel, Catalog (1942), list 35, p. 95; A. Aescoly, 
Ha-Tenubt ha-Meshihiyyot be-Yisrael, 1 (1956), 222fT. 

[Gershom Scholem] 

BOTEACH, SHMUEL ("Schmuley"; 1966- ), British-Amer- 
ican rabbi. Born in Miami, Florida, and educated in the 
United States, Israel, and elsewhere, Boteach was sent by the 
Lubavitcher Rebbe to Oxford as the first residential rabbi there 
for some decades. At Oxford he became well known for estab- 
lishing the L'Chaim Society, which grew into one of the largest 
bodies at England s oldest university. It was devoted to spark- 
ing debate on religious issues, often by bringing high-pro- 
file speakers (including such unlikely guests as Mikhail Gor- 
bachev and Boy George, the pop singer) to Oxford. Boteach 
became a familiar figure on British radio and television. He 
is perhaps even better known for having written widely, from 
an Orthodox perspective, on controversial topics, especially 
sex, such as Kosher Sex (1998) and Kosher Adultery (2002), and 
gave a four-part radio series entitled A Jewish Guide to Sexu- 
ality. In 1999 he won the London Times' Preacher of the Year 
contest. More recently he lived in New Jersey. 

[William D. Rubinstein (2 nd ed.)] 

BOTEIN, BERNARD (1900-1974), U.S. jurist and leader in 
court reform. Botein was born to poor parents on the Lower 
East Side of New York City. After qualifying as a lawyer, he 
rapidly earned a reputation as an investigator of fraudulent 
schemes in the automobile accident field; his findings of fraud 
in the New York State Insurance Fund led to the conviction 
of eighteen auditors and nearly 150 businessmen and to the 
dismissal of forty civil servants. In 1941 Governor Herbert H. 
*Lehman appointed him to the State Supreme Court, on which 
he served for 27 years; subsequently Governor Averell Harri- 
man named him Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, 
First Department, a position he held for eleven years. In this 
office he won a national reputation for his judicial reforms and 
as a creative court administrator. Many of his innovations lib- 
eralized procedures and thereby benefited indigent defendants 
who suffered from inequality in the administration of crimi- 
nal justice. He fought for lower bail, reorganized the Family 
Court, and in other ways vitalized the courts* administration 
and improved procedures. 



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101 



BOTON, ABRAHAM BEN JUDAH DI 



The editorial obituary in the New York Times referred to 
him as "one of the lions of the law who never forgot that the 
cardinal principle of justice was compassion for all." Justice 
Botein was president of the Association of the Bar of the City 
of New York 1970-1972. 

He was the author of a number of legal works, including: 
The Slum and Crime (1935), Trial Judge (1952), and The Prosecu- 
tor (1956). Botein was active in Jewish communal life. 

[Milton Ridvas Konvitz (2 nd ed.)] 

BOTON, ABRAHAM BEN JUDAH DI (i7io?-after 1780), 
Turkish talmudist and halakhist. Born in ^Salonika, in his 
youth he was already considered one of its great scholars. 
Some time before 1753, he was appointed chief rabbi of Mo- 
nastir (Bitolj), where he served until his death. His responsa 
and halakhic novellae, together with some by his son, were 
published under the title Mahazeh Avraham (Salonika, 1795) 
by his grandson David di Boton who was also chief rabbi of 
Monastir. 

bibliography: Rosanes, Togarmah, 5 (1938), 122; Azulai, 2 
(1852), 78, no. 79. 

BOTON, ABRAHAM BEN MOSES DE (i54?-after 1592), 
rabbi and halakhist. De Boton was born in Salonika, the son 
of the rabbinic scholar Moses de *Boton (d. 1570). He and 
Mordecai *Kalai studied at R. Samuel de Medina's yeshivah; 
the latter later intimated that many of Abraham's ideas were 
really his, but this claim was never proved. De Boton served 
as rabbi of the large and wealthy Apulia congregation in Sa- 
lonika; while this congregation was established by Italian 
Jews (and retained the Italian liturgy), it eventually had both 
Sephardi members and rabbinic leaders (of Italian ancestry) 
in its midst. 

De Boton was not noted for one particular field of ex- 
pertise but considered to be capable of judging disputes in all 
areas. As a result, he was consulted throughout the Sephardi 
Diaspora. Among his writings is a commentary to portions of 
the Talmud tractate Bava Kamma which appears in Me-Hara- 
rei Nemarim (Venice, 1599) as well as a collection of numerous 
responsa he wrote entitled Lehem Rav (Smyrna, 1660). The lat- 
ter was published and financed by his grandson and grandsons 
brother-in-law. Lehem Rav contains decisions that were fre- 
quently quoted throughout the Jewish world and set halakhic 
precedents. They deal with a broad range of topics, including 
international trade, taxation, public leadership, and congre- 
gational regulations as well as issues of property, inheritance, 
business, marriage, etc. A great deal can be learned from them 
about the Ottoman Empire and particularly about Salonika of 
the 16 th century. The author s style here is precise and reflects 
erudition and a mastery of Hebrew. 

His best-known work is Lehem Mishneh (Venice, 1604), 
a commentary to Maimonides' Mishneh Torah. The Saloni- 
kan rabbi was not aware that Joseph *Caro was simultane- 
ously preparing a similar study, and when Caros Kesef Mish- 
neh appeared in 1575, he was careful only to include his own 



innovations and even pointed out differences and agreements 
of opinion. De Boton had a sophisticated critical eye, for he 
examined different versions of the Talmud and editions of 
manuscripts while preparing his own work. 

Abraham de Boton fell victim to a plague some time af- 
ter 1592. 

bibliography: M. Ben-Sasson, W.Z. Harvey, Y. Ben-Naeh, 
and Z. Zohar (eds.)> Studies in a Rabbinic Family: the de Botons (1998); 
H. Gerber, "Entrepreneurship and International Trade in the Eco- 
nomic Activities of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth 
and Seventeenth Centuries," in: Zion, 43:3-4 (1978), 38-67 (Heb.); 
A. Shochet, "Taxation and Communal Leadership in the Commu- 
nities of Greece in the Sixteenth Century," in: Sefunot, 11 (1971-77), 

299-341 (Heb.). 

[Renee Levine Melammed (2 nd ed.)] 

BOTON, HIYYA ABRAHAM BEN AARON DI (17 th cen- 
tury), rabbi and Erez Israel emissary. Hiyya di Boton was a 
grandson of Abraham b. Moses di *Boton, and apparently 
studied in Gallipoli under his uncle, Meir di *Boton. In 1648 
he was in Smyrna, where he was a member of the bet din of 
Joseph *Escapa. His only son and his daughters died in an 
epidemic there (before 1660). Hiyya was a friend of Hayyim 
b. Israel *Benveniste and corresponded with him as well as 
with his kinsman Moses *Benveniste. He published Lehem 
Rav (Smyrna, 1660), the responsa of his grandfather. Boton 
was among those who opposed Shabbetai Zevi in Smyrna. 
After 1674 he immigrated to Jerusalem, where he became a 
member of the bet din of Moses *Galante, dealing particularly 
with cases of divorce. He went as an emissary of Erez Israel to 
Turkey and the Balkans and in 1680 was in Belgrade and in 
Sarejevo. In 1686 he was in Jerusalem, where in 1700 he was 
appointed chief rabbi, but he died shortly afterward. 

bibliography: Azulai, 1 (1852), 7 no. 25; Frumkin-Rivlin, 2 
(1928), 74 no. 15; Yaari, Sheluhei, 300-12; Scholem, Shabbetai Zevi, 

1 (i957)> 338. 

BOTON, JACOB BEN ABRAHAM DI (i635?-i687), hal- 
akhist. Jacob was born in Salonika and was a disciple of Hasdai 
ha-Kohen Perahyah. His father, Abraham b. Jacob (b. c. 1610), 
grandson of Abraham b. Moses di *Boton, was also a disciple 
of Hasdai ha-Kohen Perahyah and was appointed chief rabbi 
of Salonika in 1678. He was among the opponents of Shabbetai 
Zevi. During the lifetime of his father, Jacob acted as dayyan y 
with the specific task of enforcing payments imposed by the 
bet din. He was acquainted with and believed in Shabbetai 
Zevi. When his father died, he failed in his attempt to succeed 
him as chief rabbi, despite the recommendation of Solomon 
*Amarillo. Jacob wrote many responsa, the earliest of which is 
dated 1658. They contain important material on the economic 
conditions of the time, dealing, among other things, with the 
guild of dyers to which he himself belonged. He made use of 
many manuscripts of rishonim and quoted early regulations 
of the Salonika community. A substantial part of his responsa 
was burnt together with his other writings when he was in 
Constantinople at the home of Hayyim Alfandari. His son- 



102 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOTOSHANSKY, JACOB 



in-law, Solomon Abrabanel, published the remainder of his 
responsa under the title Edut be-Yaakov (Salonika, 1720). He 
is known to have written four other books: (1) a commentary 
on the Mishnah, written during the plague of 1679 when he 
was in the village of Libada; (2) a commentary on the Ittur of 
*Isaac b. Abba Mari, a part of which was published with the 
responsa; (3) a work on the novellae of Solomon b. Abraham 
*Adret and on other topics; (4) commentaries to the Talmud 
and the posekim. A fragment from this work was included in 
his one printed book. 

bibliography: I.S. Emmanuel, Mazzevot Saloniki, 2 (1968), 
150-2; Azulai, 1 (1852), 86, no. 210; 2 (1852), 106, no. 12; Steinschneider, 
Cat Bod, 1195, no. 5513. 

BOTON, MEIR BEN ABRAHAM DI (c. 1575-1649), rabbi 
and halakhist. Born in Salonika, he studied under his father, 
Abraham, b. Moses di *Boton. In his introduction to his fa- 
thers Lehem Mishneh y he describes the trials and the expul- 
sions he had experienced from his youth. He was appointed 
rabbi of Gallipoli and served there until his death. Students 
from all parts of Turkey, among them (Nissim) Solomon 
*Algazi, streamed to his yeshivah, which became a center of 
study. Even in his youth, Meir was in correspondence with 
the greatest halakhic authorities of the day, and problems 
were addressed to him even from Constantinople. He occu- 
pied himself to a considerable extent with communal affairs 
and also took an interest in poetry. After his death, his library 
was pillaged. The few responsa which remained in scattered 
pamphlets were collected and published with other material 
by his son-in-law, Jesse Almuli (Smyrna, 1660), who added 
his own valuable notes. Meir di Boton was a close friend of 
Hayyim *Benveniste, who mentions their correspondence in 
his Ba'ei Hayyei. 

bibliography: Conforte, Kore, 43a, 51b; Azulai, 1 (1852), 
118, no. 6; Rosanes, Togarmah, 3 (1938), 197; Wallenstein, in: Meli- 
lah, 1 (1944), 62-65. 

BOTOSANI (Rom. Botosani), town in N.E. Romania. Up to 
the end of the 19 th century it had the second largest and most 
important Jewish community in Moldavia, apparently origi- 
nating in the 17 th century. There was a considerable commu- 
nity in Botosani by the early 18 th century. In 1745 merchants 
in Botosani, including Jews, were granted the right to own 
their houses by the prince (gospodar). In 1799 Prince Alex- 
ander Ypsilanti gave a privilege (now in the Central Archives 
for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem) to the Boto- 
sani community granting it the status of an autonomous cor- 
poration. In 1803 there were 350 Jewish families paying taxes 
in the town. In the 19 th century the community increased as 
a result of Jewish immigration into Moldavia and in 1899 it 
numbered 16,817 (51.8% of the total population). By the early 
19 th century the Jews of Botosani had trade connections with 
Leipzig and Brody, and contributed to the economic develop- 
ment of the town. A growing number engaged in crafts. The 
Christian population demanded that the authorities should 



ban Jews from these occupations. Despite this opposition, by 
1899 more than 75% of the merchants and approximately 68% 
of the artisans in Botosani were Jewish. There were anti-Jew- 
ish riots in 1879. Anti- Jewish feelings again flared up during 
the Romanian peasant revolt in 1907. When the Jewish com- 
munities in Romania were deprived of their official status 
at the beginning of the 1860s, sharp internal conflicts in the 
Botosani community led to its disintegration and disruption 
of its activities; many of its institutions closed down. In 1866 
Hillel Kahana, the Hebrew writer and educator, founded a 
secular Jewish school in Botosani. Despite opposition from 
Orthodox circles and several temporary closures, it existed 
up to the outbreak of World War 11, in part supported by the 
Alliance Israelite Universelle. The Hebrew writers David Isa- 
iah *Silberbusch, Zevi Lazar ^Teller, and Israel ^Teller taught 
there. At the beginning of 1882 Silberbusch and Teller pub- 
lished the first two numbers of the Hebrew monthly Ha-Or in 
Botosani. After World War 1 the community was reorganized. 
It numbered 11,840 in 1930 (36.6% of the total population). 
Institutions maintained by the community included two pri- 
mary schools (for boys and girls) and a vocational school for 
girls. In 1940, all the Jewish men between 15 and 70 years of 
age were taken to forced labor. Around 11,000 Jews from small 
towns, and villages (Sulita, Frumusica, Ripiceni, Heci-Lespezi, 
Targu-Frumos, Falticeni, Pascani, Stefanesti, Mihaileni) were 
forcibly moved to or found refuge in Botosani. They lived in 
poverty, aided by the community. After the outbreak of war 
against the U.S.S.R. (June 22, 1941), around 8,000 Jews from 
Botosani worked at forced labor, half of them in Bessarabia, 
Transnistria, Dobruja, and Jassy. The community helped many 
pauperized Jews. Two Jewish secondary schools were founded 
for the Jewish pupils excluded from the public schools. After 
the war, when the evacuees from the villages in the area and 
those who returned from Transnistria settled in the city, Bo- 
tosani s total Jewish population numbered 19,550 (1947). A 
few years later most of the population settled in Israel, leav- 
ing 500 families and four synagogues in 1969. The local shohet 
also served as the community's rabbi. In 2004, 125 Jews lived 
in Botosani, with a functioning synagogue. 

bibliography: J.B. Brociner, Chestiunea Israelitilor Romani 
(1910), 169-75; A. Gorovei, Monografia Orasului Botosani (1926), 
passim; E. Tauber, in: Anuarul Evreilor din Romania (1937), 151-57; 
pk Romanyah, I, 29-39; M. Carp, Cartea Neagra, 1 (1946), 154, 158. 
add. bibliography: FEDROM-Comunitati Evreiesti din Roma- 
nia (Internet, 2004). 

[Eliyahu Feldman and Theodor Lavi / Lucian-Zeev 

Herscovici (2 nd ed.)] 

BOTOSHANSKY, JACOB (1892-1964), Yiddish novelist, 

journalist, and critic. Bo tosh an sky was born in Bessarabia. He 
was active in Romania from 1914 to 1926 as a literary pioneer 
of Yiddish, and, thereafter, in Buenos Aires as editor of the 
Yiddish daily, Di Prese. In 1914-15 he was one of the found- 
ers and editors of Likht, Romania's first modern Yiddish pe- 
riodical, and collaborated with Jacob ^Sternberg in writing 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



103 



BOTSTEIN, LEON 



for the renascent Yiddish theater. In Argentina, Botoshansky 
quickly emerged as a leader combating the influence wielded 
in the Yiddish theater by the criminal elements who were 
then prudishly called "white slave traders"; he never ceased 
to play a prominent role in Jewish cultural life there. His writ- 
ings include travel sketches of North and South America and 
of Israel. Two of his dramas, Hershele Ostropolyer and Reb Ber 
Lyover (1928), were staged in Argentina and Soviet Russia. His 
works include Mir Viln Lebn ("We Want to Live," 1948) and Di 
Keniginfun Dorem-Amerike ("The Queen of South America," 
1962), both fictional travel sketches; Di Lebnsgeshikhte fun a 
Yidishn Zhurnalist ("The Biography of a Jewish Journalist," 
memoirs, 3 vols., 1948); and Pshat ("Simply Speaking," liter- 
ary essays, 1952). 

bibliography: Jacob Botoshansky tsu Zayne Zekhtsik Yor 
(1955); lnyl, 1 (1956), 211-12; A. Glanz-Leyeles, Velt un Vort (1958) 
292-6; S. Bickel, Rumenye (1961), 356-60. 

[Shlomo Bickel / Alan Astro (2 nd ed.)] 

BOTSTEIN, LEON (1946- ), U.S. conductor and music his- 
torian. Botstein was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and moved 
to New York with his family in 1949. He studied violin with 
Roman Totenberg and conducting with Richard Wernick and 
Harold Farberman. Afterwards, he dedicated himself to his- 
tory (Ph.D. Harvard University, 1985). In 1975 Botstein was 
appointed president of Bard College (New York) and Leon 
Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities. In 1992 he became 
music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and in 
1995 artistic director of the American Russian Young Artists 
Orchestra. He appeared as a guest conductor in Europe, Asia, 
and South America. In 2003 Botstein was appointed music di- 
rector of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. 

As a conductor, he was widely known for his ambition to 
broaden the horizons of his audience while performing less- 
known and rarely played music, especially of late 19 th century 
and 20 th century composers; his recordings also served the 
same purpose. In 1990 Botstein founded the Bard Music Fes- 
tival, whose concerts are accompanied by essays devoted to 
the composers performed each time. His aim was to involve 
listeners in a deeper absorption of music. 

As a prominent music historian, Botstein was appointed 
editor of the professional journal The Musical Quarterly in 
1992. His numerous publications investigate mainly the prob- 
lems of performance and reception of music, the Austrian and 
German music tradition of the 19 th and 20 th centuries, and 
the role of Jews in the spiritual life of the German-speaking 
world. His books and articles have been published in German, 
English, and Russian. For his contributions to music he has 
received several awards, including the American Academy of 
Arts and Letters Award and Harvard University s prestigious 
Centennial Award as well as the Cross of Honor, First Class, 
from the government of Austria. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY: NG 



[Yulia Kreinin (2 nd ed.)] 



BOTVINNIK, MIKHAIL (1911-1995), Soviet chess master. 
Born in Repnik, Saint Petersburg (Leningrad) district, Botvin- 
nik was world champion in the years 1948-57, 1958-60, and 
1961-63. He received the Soviet title of Grand Master in 1935 
and International Grand Master in 1945. He graduated as a 
doctor of technical sciences in the field of electricity, distin- 
guished himself in this field, and was decorated by the Soviet 
government at the end of World War 11. In 1931, 1933, 1939 , 
1944, 1945, and 1952 he was champion of the Soviet Union. 
Borvinik created the so-called scientific school of preparation 
for chess tournaments and brought the method to perfection. 
This laid the basis of the Soviet school of chess school, boast- 
ing a great many Grand Masters, including Gary ^Kasparov. 
According to some chess specialists the best game in history 
belongs to Borvinnik, his victory over Capablanca in Amster- 
dam in 1938. From the 1960s he tried to use the achievements 
of chess theory to develop artificial intelligence and chess 
computers. Borvinnik grew up in an assimilated family, but 
encountered antisemitism in daily life. He displayed courage 
in the dark years of Stalin and after, and published warm words 
about Israel, Pinhas *Rutenberg, and the kibbutz, defending 
the right of the Jews to live in their ancient homeland. In con- 
trast to other Jewish cultural activists, he never signed letters 
condemning Israel. His autobiography appeared in English 
translation in 1981 as Achieving the Aim. 

[Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

BOUCHARA, Algerian family, prominent in the Jewish com- 
munity life of Algiers from the 17 th century. Abraham (early 
18 th century) was *muqaddim (leader) of the community and 
adviser to the deys; his brother isaac, well-known about 
1726, was a shipowner and financier in Leghorn, Genoa, and 
Algiers. Abrahams son jacob Raphael (d. 1768) succeeded 
his father as muqaddim. Raphael, who was very wealthy and 
an associate of the dey, represented Ragusa (*Dubrovnik) as 
consul (1735). He was one of the principal shipowners of his 
time, and his commercial activities extended from Alexandria 
to Venice and from Leghorn to Hamburg. He supported ye- 
shivot and printed Hebrew works at his own expense. His son 
Joseph was employed by Christian governments to ransom 
Christian prisoners. Jacob Raphaels other son, Abraham 
(d. 1801), succeeded him as consul and muqaddim., but in 1800 
Naphtali *Busnach replaced him in the latter position. Abra- 
ham had disputes with the community, which were eventually 
settled in his favor by the scholars Jacob *Benaim and H.J.D. 
*Azulai. At the beginning of his career, Abraham represented 
the U.S. in its negotiations with the dey. Although involved in 
commercial affairs, he pursued talmudic and kabbalistic stud- 
ies. He wrote three works: Beit Avraham and Likkutei Tanakh, 
both unpublished, and Ber it Avraham (Leghorn, 1791), a col- 
lection of homilies. 

bibliography: J. Ayash, Beit Yehudah (1746), preface; A. 
Devoulx (J.M. Haddey), Le Livre dor des Israelites Algeriens (1871), 
52-56, 62-64; E. Plantet, Correspondence des Deys d'Alger, 2 (1893), 



10 4 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOULE 



237-8; I. Bloch, Inscriptions tumulaires . . . d'Alger (1888), 62-64, 9 1- 93; 
Hirschberg, Afrikah, 2 (1965), 62-63, 66. 

[David Corcos] 

°BOUDIN, JEAN-FRANCOIS, known as Father Justin 

(1736-1811), French Capuchin friar and preacher. Boudin was 
appointed by Joseph Beni, bishop of Carpentras, at the end of 
1783 to deliver the conversionist sermons which the Jews of 
Carpentras were obliged to attend. Seventeen of the sermons 
he delivered between 1787 and 1790, as well as his short trea- 
tise Notion du Talmud, are preserved in a manuscript in the 
Avignon public library (Ms. 1525). 

bibliography: Barjavel, in: J.-F. Boudin, Histoire de Guer- 
res... (1859 2 ), xiifF. 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

BOUDREAU, LOU (1917-2001), U.S. baseball player, mem- 
ber of the Hall of Fame. Boudreau s mother was from an Or- 
thodox Jewish family and Boudreau was raised as a Jew and 
attended Passover Seders at his grandparents* home until he 
was 10, when his parents divorced. Thereafter he was raised 
as a Catholic by his French father. Boudreau was a career .295 
hitter and standout shortstop who played 15 years beginning 
in 1939, mostly with the Cleveland Indians. In 1948 he fash- 
ioned one of the greatest individual seasons ever, hitting .355 
with 18 home runs, 106 runs batted in, and 116 runs scored - 
and struck out only nine times - to win the Most Valuable 
Player award. He was also manager of the team, having been 
named skipper in 1942 at age of 24, the youngest person ever 
to manage a major-league team. Boudreau led al shortstops 
in fielding eight times, won the 1944 American League bat- 
ting title (.327), and led the league in doubles in 1941, 1944, 
and 1947. He was also the creator on July 14, 1946, of the leg- 
endary "Williams Shift," when he placed all his fielders except 
the third baseman and left fielder on the right side of the field 
against the pull -hitting Ted Williams. Boudreau later managed 
the Athletics and Cubs. The Indians retired his No. 5 uniform 
number and the street bordering Municipal Stadium in Cleve- 
land was renamed Boudreau Boulevard. 

[Elli Wohlgelernter (2 nd ed.)] 

BOUGIE (Ar. Bajaya; ancient Saldae), town in Algeria. Re- 
built in 1067, Bougie attracted Muslim, Jewish, and Christian 
families, who had been exempted from taxes by the Muslim 
authorities as an inducement to settle there. A port, and of- 
ten the capital city, its commerce flourished, and it became a 
great intellectual center. Although the city's inhabitants were 
spared by the conquering *Almohades in 1152, the city later 
declined. Jews from the Balearic Islands, Italy, and Marseilles 
settled there in the 13 th century, but many members of the in- 
digenous Jewish community emigrated. Later, however, be- 
cause of the 1391 persecutions, many Jews from Spain and the 
Balearic Isles took refuge in Bougie and eventually became 
the towns leading businessmen. As a result, Bougie had two 



separate communities: the older inhabitants and the new ref- 
ugees. Among those who lived in Bougie were the scholarly 
rabbis Isaac c Abd al-Haqq and Astruc Cohen, the c Ammar, 
Najar, and Stora families, Isaac Nafusi, the astronomer and 
instrument-maker (originally from Majorca), and the Bacri- 
Kohen family, which flourished there in the 15 th and 16 th cen- 
turies. When the Spanish conquered Bougie in 1510, Jewish 
property was pillaged and many Jews were sold as slaves, but 
the community continued to exist. In 1553 the Turks occu- 
pied Bougie, which from then on lost its importance (3,000 
inhabitants, of whom 600 were Jews). The Turks granted ex- 
clusive trading rights and a concession of the port to David 
Bacri of Algiers in 1807. With the arrival of the French in 1833 
the Jewish community left the town, a few Jews returning in 
1838. Thereafter there were never more than 800 Jews in Bou- 
gie; none remained by the late 1960s. 

bibliography: R. Brunschwig, Berberie orientale sous les 

Hafsides, 1 (1940), 377-84, 398-428; A. Hershman, Rabbi Isaac bar 

Sheshet Perfet and his Times (1943), index; Hirschberg, Afrikah, 2 

(1965), index s.v. Bajaya. 

[David Corcos] 

BOULAY, small town in northeastern France; formerly be- 
longing to the Duchy of Lorraine. Jews settled in Boulay in 
the first half of the 17 th century. It was the home of Raphael 
*Levy, the victim of a *blood libel, executed in 1670. In 1721 
Duke Leopold confirmed the right of 19 Jewish families to re- 
side in Boulay and designated the synagogue as the main one 
for the duchy. A cemetery is mentioned from the end of the 
17 th century. The Jewish population numbered 137 in 1808, 265 
in 1831, and 120 in 1931. During World War 11, 11 Jews from 
Boulay were deported by the Germans and one was shot. The 
synagogue was destroyed, but was rebuilt in 1956. In 1968, the 
Jewish population was about 35. 

bibliography: F. Guir, Histoire de Boulay (1933), 73f.; C. 
Pfister, Histoire de Nancy, 3 (1909), 318; Almanack des communautes 
israelites de la Moselle (1955), i2if.; Z. Szajkowski, Analytical Franco- 
Jewish Gazetteer (1966), 229. 

[Gilbert Cahen] 

BOULE (Gr. Bou\r|), in ancient Greece, a state council; in 
Erez Israel a city council which played an important role dur- 
ing and after the Second Temple period. One of the Hellenis- 
tic institutions established in cities founded by Herod and his 
sons, the Boule later spread to other urban areas inhabited 
mainly by Jews. There was a Boule also in Jerusalem; in Tibe- 
rias it consisted of 600 members; and the Boule in Ashkelon is 
mentioned in a source dating from the end of the third century 
c.e. (t j, Peah 1:1, 15c). In some cities the Boule was housed in 
a special building (Aram. 'Till KJIt^'lD, Kenishta de-Boulei), in 
which the sages delivered public homilies (tj, Shek. 7:3, 50c; 
tj, Ta'an. 1:2, 64a). Various talmudic sources refer to the Boule 
in southern Judean cities dissolved apparently because of in- 
ternal friction (t j, Ned. 3:2, 38a; t j, Shevu. 3:10, 34d; Git. 37a). 
The principal function of the Boule was to levy taxes for the 



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105 



BOURG-EN-BRESSE 



Roman administration, for the collection of which the prop- 
erty of members of the Boule was the surety. Since the taxes 
had frequently to be extorted from the people, wealthy men, 
appointed against their will, tried various ways to evade serv- 
ing on the Boule, sometimes by flight, and hence the remark 
of R. Johanan (middle of the third century c.e.): "If you have 
been nominated for the Boule, let the Jordan be your neigh- 
bor" (tj, mk 2:3, 81b). 

bibliography: Alon, in: Tarbiz> 14 (1943), 145 ff. (repr. in his 

Mearim, 2 (1958), 246°.). 

[Abraham Schalit] 

BOURG-EN-BRESSE, capital of the department of the 
Ain, eastern France. The first mention of Jews in Bourg-en- 
Bresse dates from 1277 when the Jews and the Cahorsins paid 
50 livres to the lady of the manor. An agreement of 1438 be- 
tween the city guilds and the Jews of Bourg-en-Bresse regard- 
ing their share in the expenses for fortifications was signed 
by 11 heads of families. The Jews then constituted some 3% 
of the population. The census of 1512 notes that there were 
no longer Jews living in Bourg-en-Bresse. At the beginning 
of World War 11, 10 to 15 Jewish families were living in the 
town. Seven of the Jews arrested during the raids of July 10, 
1944, were executed. There has been no subsequent Jewish 
community. 

bibliography: C. Jarrin, Essai sur Vhistoire de Bourg-en- 
Bresse (1876), 19, 29; idem, LaBresse...,2 (1885), 21; Gerson, in: Revue 
savoisienne, 26 (1885), 84ff.; J. Brossard, Cartulaire de Bourg-en-Bresse 
(1882), no. 90 (cf. no. 148); Z. Szajkowski, Analytical Franco-Jewish 

Gazetteer (1966), 149. 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

°BOURGEOIS, JEAN, son of a Parisian merchant, mur- 
dered on August 26, 1652, by members of the secondhand 
dealers guild which he had insulted by calling it "the syna- 
gogue." The affair was taken up in numerous broadsheets, or 
"Mazarinades? often in verse, which presented the event as if 
the dealers were Jews guilty of ritual murder. They demanded 
the expulsion of the Jews from France, although there were 
then no professing Jews in the country. Prosecution of the 
accomplices in the crime was stopped in June 1653, by royal 
writ which expressly noted that all the accused "professed the 
Catholic religion." 

bibliography: Z. Szajkowski, Franco -Judaica (1962), ii7f.; 
R. Anchel, Juifs de France (1946), 130 ff. 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

BOURGES, capital of the department of Cher, central France. 
In 570 a Jew, Sigericus, was baptized in Bourges, while at 
about the same time a Jew practicing medicine there treated 
a cleric. *Sulpicius, bishop of Bourges, 624-647, attempted 
to convert the Jews in Bourges to Christianity and expelled 
any who resisted his missionary activities. In 1020 a Jewish 
quarter is mentioned to the south of the city. About 1200 a 
baptized Jew of Bourges named Guillaume, who had become 



a deacon, composed an anti-Jewish treatise, Bellum Domini 
adversus Iudaeos. Around 1250 the pope requested the arch- 
bishop of Bourges to secure a livelihood for the baptized Jew, 
Jean. Between the end of the 13 th century and 1305 many Jew- 
ish names appear on the municipal tax rolls and bailiff court 
records. A building at 79 Rue des Juifs is believed to have 
been used as a synagogue in the Middle Ages. The commu- 
nity ceased to exist after the Jews were expelled from France 
in the 14 th century. During World War 11, especially after June 
1940, hundreds of Jewish refugees were temporarily settled 
in Bourges. 

bibliography: B. Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chretiens... (i960), 
index; idem, in: Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 4 (1966), 278-9; P. Gauchery 
and A. de Grossouvre, Notre Vieux Bourges (1966 2 ), 149; G. Nahon, in: 
rej, 121 (1962), 64; Z. Szajkowski, Analytical Franco-Jewish Gazetteer 
(1966), 174; S. Grayzel, Church and Jews (1966), index. 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

BOURKEWHITE, MARGARET (Peg; 1904-1971), U.S. 
photojournalist. Bourke- White was the daughter of Minnie 
Bourke, who was Irish-English and a Catholic, and Joseph 
White, formerly Weiss, from an Orthodox Polish family. 
Born in the Bronx, the pioneering photographer, whose father 
was an inventor of printing presses, grew up in Bound Brook, 
n.j. In 1922, while studying herpetology at Columbia Univer- 
sity, she developed an interest in photography after studying 
under Clarence White, a master of impressionistic soft-fo- 
cus photography. In 1925, she married Everett Chapman, but 
the couple divorced a year later. After switching colleges 
several times, she graduated from Cornell in 1927 and a year 
later moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she opened a stu- 
dio and specialized in architectural photography. She soon 
became an industrial photographer at the Otis Steel Com- 
pany, where she honed her love of hard-edged industry and 
architecture. 

Bourke-Whites rise to fame in a mans world was partly 
the work of Henry Luce, the publisher of Time magazine, 
who recruited her to be his photographer for the new Fortune 
magazine. "She could make anything beautiful," a writer in 
the New York Times said, "piles of ground-up pig parts, rows 
of hanging cow carcasses, dreary assembly lines." Word got 
around and for years it was said that no mogul could resist 
her pictorial or feminine charms. She took countless pictures 
in factories and warehouses. By arranging industrial products 
and materials and lighting them dramatically, she made them 
dance and sing, a reviewer wrote. "Her plow blades look like 
legs of Rockettes." 

She was a climber in more ways than one. As a child, 
she liked to walk along the tops of fences. When she grew 
up, she requested the top floors of hotels. Her office in the 
Chrysler Building was eye-level with the gargoyles. In 1930 
Bourke-White made a trip to Germany, and while there pe- 
titioned her way into the Soviet Union to take pictures. She 
made the Soviet construction projects look heroic. In 1934, 
in the depths of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, her cor- 



106 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOVE-BUKH 



porate commissions began to dry up. She couldn't afford her 
Art Deco office in the Chrysler Building. Fortune sent her to 
cover the drought in the Midwest. Her pictures seemed to 
focus on the abstract pattern, the play of light and dark, and 
the rhythm of repetition. Her photographs of poverty in the 
South, published in You Have Seen Their Faces, a 1937 book 
written with the novelist Erskine Caldwell, who became her 
second husband, was a public success. But the book was crit- 
icized for left-wing bias and upset whites in the Deep South 
with its passionate attack on racism. Carl Mydans of Life later 
said: "Margaret Bourke-Whites social awareness was clear 
and obvious. All the editors at the magazine were aware of 
her commitment to social causes." Luce had made her one of 
the original photographers for the new Life magazine in 1936, 
along with Alfred * Eisenstaedt, and it was her photograph of 
three marching concrete pillars at the Fort Peck Dam that ap- 
peared on the inaugural cover. 

She and Caldwell were the only foreign journalists in 
the Soviet Union when the German army invaded in 1941. 
She photographed the German bombing raids before return- 
ing to the United States, where she and Caldwell produced 
another attack on social inequality, Say, Is This the U.S.A.? 
(1942). During the World War 11, she served as a war corre- 
spondent, working both for Life and for the U.S. Air Force. 
She survived a torpedo attack while on a ship to North Africa, 
photographed the bombing of Tunis and was with the United 
States troops and photographed the liberation of the Buchen- 
wald death camp. These photographs, along with Edward R. 
Murrows reporting, achieved iconographic status. After the 
war she continued her interest in racial inequality by docu- 
menting *Gandhis nonviolent campaign in India and apart- 
heid in South Africa. 

An incredibly hard worker with legendary stamina and 
perseverance, she had a reputation of being persuasive, charm- 
ing, persistent, and manipulative. She constantly alienated 
women while trying to please men. She thrived on adven- 
ture and crisis and put her photographic ambitions ahead 
of virtually everything. She had just said goodbye to Gandhi 
and was leaving India when she got word that he had been 
assassinated. She rushed to his house where his family and 
friends - who were her friends, too - welcomed her in their 
sorrow. There were to be no pictures, but Bourke-White smug- 
gled in a camera and took a shot, with a flashbulb, before she 
was thrown out. 

In 1952 she went to the Far East to cover Japan and the 
Korean War. There she took what she considered her best pho- 
tograph, a meeting between a returning soldier and his mother 
who thought he had been killed several months earlier. She 
felt the first symptoms of Parkinsons disease in 1953 but stub- 
bornly refused to give in to her disabilities and worked for Life 
until 1957. She spent eight years writing her autobiography, 
Portrait of Myself, which was published in 1963. 

Bourke-Whites father kept his Jewishness hidden from 
her, and she only learned about it at his death when she was 
18. Her biographer, Vicki Goldberg, in 1986, says her demand- 



ing mother was an antisemite and only three or four friends 
knew of Bourke-Whites religious background. 

[Stewart Kampel (2 nd ed.)] 

BOUWMEESTER, LOUIS FREDERIK JOHANNES (1842- 
1925), Dutch actor. Born into an acting family, Bouwmeester 
made his first appearance at the age of 12. He became widely 
esteemed for his acting in Shakespeare, especially as Shylock. 
Other Shakespearean roles he played were Hamlet, Mark Ant- 
ony, Wolsey, and Richard in. At the age of 80 he played Shy- 
lock on the occasion of the 1922 Hague Conference. 

bibliography: bwn 2 (1985), 5860 

BOUZAGLO, DAVID (1903-1975), Moroccan paytan and 
musician. Born in Casablanca, Rabbi David was endowed 
with a refined intelligence and distinguished himself as a 
highly cultured person in the realm of the sacred Judaic writ- 
ings (Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and Zohar) and retained most 
of those texts in his extraordinary memory. This latter capac- 
ity became compulsive when his blindness began to develop 
in 1949. As an outstanding musician, his inborn talent en- 
abled him to learn and master the highly sophisticated art of 
the Andalusian nuba to the extent that non- Jewish musicians 
used to seek his teaching and advise. This skillfulness magni- 
fied his great contribution to the singing of *bakkashot both 
as interpreter and mentor. In the framework of this traditional 
musical genre Buzaglo used his openness and creative mind 
to introduce innovative elements, which he derived particu- 
larly from the style he passionately loved, the so-called sharqi 
(lit. Oriental, meaning Egyptian, Turkish, and Near Eastern 
styles). Bouzaglo subtly incorporated the melodies he bor- 
rowed from this and other styles, endowing them with a Mo- 
roccan flavor. 

Because of his dominating personality Bouzaglo became 
a legend in his lifetime and was in great demand as cantor and 
paytan. In 1969, he immigrated to Israel, where his former 
disciples as well as new ones continued to follow his teaching 
and, inspired by his spirit, preserve the Jewish musical tradi- 
tion. Regrettably, he left almost no documentation of his art, 
always refusing insistently to be recorded, perhaps from a de- 
sire to preserve the magic halo of his live performances. Nev- 
ertheless, in 1957, in Casablanca, he made an exception and 
authorized the late Prof. Haim Zafrani to make a recording 
of a selection of chants and piyyutim. The Jewish Music Cen- 
ter of Tel Avivs Bet Hatefutzot published an album including 
this unique recorded material in 1984. 

[Amnon Shiloah (2 nd ed.)] 

BOVE-BUKH, a chivalric romance adapted in 1507 by Elye 
Bokher (Elijah Bahur *Levita) into 650 ottava rima stanzas in 
Yiddish from a Tuscan version (Buovo d'Antona) of the early 
i4 th -century Anglo-Norman original, Boeuve de Haumton. 
This tale of the heroic adventures of the noble Bovo, exiled 
from his homeland by the machinations of his murderous 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



107 



BOVSHOVER, JOSEPH 



mother, his wanderings through the world (as far as Baby- 
lon), and the love story of Bovo and Druzyana, their separa- 
tion, his triumphant return home, and the final reunion with 
Druzyana and their two sons, proved to be one of the most 
beloved tales in the Yiddish literary tradition over the course 
of more than two centuries. 

bibliography: M. Weinreich, Bilder fun der Yidisher Lit- 

eratur Geshikhte (1929), 149-71; G.E. Weil, Elie Levita, humaniste 

et massorete (1963). add. bibliography: J.A. JofTe (ed.), Elye 

Bokher: Poetishe Shafungen in Yidish (1949), facsimile of Isny 1541 

ed.; C. Shmeruk, Pro kimfun der Yidisher Literatur-Geshikhte (1988), 

97-120, 141-56; J.C. Frakes (ed.), Early Yiddish Texts, 1100-1750 (2004), 

120-39; J- Baumgarten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature (2005), 

163-206. 

[Sol Liptzin / Jerold C. Frakes (2 nd ed.)] 

BOVSHOVER, JOSEPH (1873-1915), Yiddish poet. Bovsho- 
ver was born in Lubavitch, Belorussia, and immigrated to the 
United States from Riga in 1891. Influenced by the radical Yid- 
dish poets, Morris *Vinchevsky, David *Edelstadt, and Morris 
*Rosenfeld, as well as by Heinrich Heine, Walt Whitman, and 
the Bible, he wrote revolutionary, anarchist poetry. Under the 
name of Basil Dahl, he also wrote poems in English (e.g., in 
Benjamin R. Tuckers Liberty (1896-97). He received exagger- 
ated critical praise, yet became increasingly melancholic and 
spent the last 15 years of his life institutionalized. He published 
essays on Heine, Emerson, Whitman, and Edwin Markham, 
and translated Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice into Yiddish. 
His collected verse and essays were published in the one -vol- 
ume Gezamelte shriftn (1911, 1916 2 ). Many of his poems (e.g. 
"Revolution') were set to music. Dror Abend-David shows 
that Bovshover's Shakespeare translation is far less daytsh- 
merish (Germanized) than his (often bathetic) verse, most 
probably under the influence of the Yiddish lexicographer 
and language reformer Alexander *Harkavy. 

bibliography: lnyl, 1 (1956), 207-10; K. Marmor, Yoy- 
sef Bovshover (1952); N.B. Minkoff, Pionern fun Yidisher Poezye in 
Amerike, 1 (1956), 131-91. add. bibliography: B. Dahl, To the 
Toilers (1928); D. Abend-David, "Scorned My Nation" (2003). 

[Elias Schulman / Leonard Prager (2 nd ed.)] 



bibliography: Loew, Flora, 1 (1926), 3i6f.; J. Feliks, Olam 
ha-Zomeah ha-Mikra'i (1968 ), 84, 317. add. bibliography: Fe- 
liks, Ha-Zomeah, 34. 

[Jehuda Feliks] 

BOXER, BARBARA (1940- ), U.S. Democratic senator 
and liberal activist. Boxer has supported women's issues, ed- 
ucation, gun control, child abuse protection, services for the 
underprivileged, military reform, and environmental pro- 
tection. Born Barbara Levy in Brooklyn, New York, she grad- 
uated with a degree in economics from Brooklyn College in 
1962 and married Stewart Boxer that same year. The couple 
had two children. After moving to Marin County, in north- 
ern California, in 1965, Boxer became involved in grassroots 
political organizations, founded a women's political caucus, 
and worked to reduce high school drop-out rates, provide job 
training, and develop child-care centers. In 1977, she won a 
seat on the Marin County Board of Supervisors, serving as the 
first woman Board president in 1982. Elected to the House of 
Representatives in 1982, Boxers record demonstrated a strong 
commitment to women's health issues, especially breast can- 
cer research. As a pro-choice advocate, Boxer sponsored leg- 
islation to protect abortion rights and freedom of access to 
abortion clinics. In 1992, Boxer and Dianne *Feinstein, also 
from California, were the first two Jewish women elected to 
the United States Senate. Like Feins tein, Boxer did not em- 
phasize her Jewish identity. In November 2004, she easily won 
re-election for her third term. In the Senate, Boxer advanced 
her feminist campaign, supporting legislation against domes- 
tic violence and combating sexual harassment in government 
and in the workplace. As chair of the Superfund, Toxic, Risk 
and Waste Management Subcommittee, she has supported 
environmental issues and led efforts to clean abandoned in- 
dustrial sites and to ban a gasoline additive suspected of be- 
ing a carcinogen. On Middle East issues, she was a reliable 
supporter of Israel. Although the partisan and uncompro- 
mising bills she proposed were seldom voted into law, Boxer 
was an impassioned voice for women, workers, children, and 

the environment. 

[Arlene Lazarowitz (2 nd ed.)] 



BOX, a shrub or tree (Buxus sempervirens) that grows wild 
in Asia Minor. It is cultivated in Israel as an ornamental tree. 
In the Mishnah it is called eshkeroa y its excellent wood being 
used for delicate articles and apparatus, such as the urn which 
was used in the Temple for the casting of lots to decide the du- 
ties of the priests (Yoma 3:9). It has a creamy yellow color and 
R. Ishmael said that the children of Israel "are like boxwood, 
neither black nor white, but an intermediate color" (Neg. 2:1). 
Since he lived in the south of Erez Israel, R. Ishmael was prob- 
ably referring to most of the inhabitants of that region, but no 
conclusions can be drawn from this statement as regards the 
color of the skin of the Jews living elsewhere in the country. 
The box is not mentioned in the Bible although the Targums 
identify it - without basis - with certain other biblical trees, 
such as the teashur. 



BOYAR, LOUIS H. (1898-1976), U.S. real estate developer 
and philanthropist. Boyar, born in San Francisco, resided in 
Los Angeles from 1934. He was a pioneer of large-scale home 
building and community planning in Los Angeles after World 
War 11. Boyar built the city of Lakewood, one of the first and 
largest planned communities in the U.S. He directed large- 
scale personal benefactions and fund-raising efforts to the eco- 
nomic and cultural needs of Israel. He served the State of Israel 
*Bonds organization in many capacities, including that of 
chairman of the Board of Governors. He also served as chair- 
man of the Board of Israel Investors, Inc. Many educational 
and social service institutions in Israel were erected by him in 
memory of his wife, Mae. Boyar was deputy chairman of the 
Board of Governors of the Hebrew University. Boyar also sup- 
ported a number of U.S. institutions, particularly in Los An- 



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BOYCOTT, ANTI-JEWISH 



geles. In Israel, the Boyar Building is a state-of-the-art facility 
located in the heart of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's 
Mount Scopus campus. It houses the Rothberg International 
School. The Na'amat women's organizations Mae Boyar Mul- 
tipurpose Day Care Center helps families in distress; the Mae 
Boyar High School in Jerusalem is a residential school that 

serves disadvantaged junior and senior high school youth. 

[Max Vorspan / Ruth Beloff (2 nd ed.)] 

BOYARIN, DANIEL (1946- ), U.S. talmudist and cultural 
critic. Boyarin was educated at Goddard College, Columbia 
University (M.A.), and the Jewish Theological Seminary of 
America (Ph.D., 1975). He taught at the Jewish Theological 
Seminary and Ben-Gurion University and Bar-Ilan University 
in Israel; from 1990 he served as the Herman P. and Sophia 
Taubman Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. 
Among his many books are Sephardi Speculation: A Study in 
Methods of Talmudic Interpretation (Heb., 1989); Inter textuality 
and the Reading of Midrash (1990); Carnal Israel: Reading Sex 
in Talmudic Culture (1993); A Radical Jew: Paul and the Poli- 
tics of Identity (1994); Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Hetero- 
sexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (1997); Dying for 
God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism 
(1999); and Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo -Christianity 
(2004). In addition, he is the author of more than 100 articles 
in Hebrew and English. 

Boyarins work is characterized by the application of post- 
modernist and post-colonialist theory to Jewish cultural his- 
tory, especially and most fruitfully, during the period of late 
antiquity. He numbers among the pioneers in the modern 
study of midrash and in the introduction of gender as a criti- 
cal category in the study of rabbinic literature. His work took 
a decided turn in his controversial study of the apostle Paul, as 
his own deep hostility to Zionism emerged as a central feature 
in his reading of Paul. From this point forward he continu- 
ally focused on the "diasporic" nature of rabbinic Judaism, in 
which Jewish culture expresses hostility to power and can even 
be characterized as "feminized." This nature is often placed in 
contrast to Zionist, territorialist, and nationalist readings of 
the Jewish past and present, which are characterized as valuing 
power and masculinity. Another turn emerged with his study 
of martyrdom and subsequent studies of the Jewish-Christian 
divide. It is Boyarins contention that, despite the rhetoric of 
differentiation found in the works of certain religious elites, 
the boundaries between Jewish and Christian communities 
were ill denned and porous through the end of the third cen- 
tury c.e. Only with the emergence of Christian orthodoxy in 
the early fourth century did a firm boundary between Juda- 
ism and Christianity emerge. 

Among his many honors, Boyarin was elected a fel- 
low of the American Academy of Jewish Research in 2000, 
and in 2002 was awarded the Jewish Cultural Achievement 
in Scholarship Award, given by the National Foundation for 
Jewish Culture. 

[Jay Harris (2 nd ed.)] 



BOYCOTT, ANTI-JEWISH, organized activity directed 
against the Jews to exclude them from social, economic, and 
political life. Anti- Jewish boycott pressure has accompanied 
*antisemitism as one of its more dangerous and frequent 
manifestations. Contacts with Jews were avoided, Jews were 
not accepted in merchants' guilds, trade associations, and 
similar organizations. This form of boycott often coincided 
with legal and administrative restrictions already in force in 
the country. 

Toward the end of the 19 th century, the anti-Jewish boy- 
cott became one of the basic weapons used for victimizing the 
Jewish population. The first International Anti-Jewish Con- 
gress in Dresden, 1882 (see Antisemitic Political Parties and 
^Organizations), adopted a slogan against Jewish merchants 
and professionals. In Western Europe, the boycott took the 
form of excluding Jews from membership of certain societies. 
In Eastern Europe the rapidly developing "national" bourgeoi- 
sie, which formed the mainstay of the rightist parties, soon 
adopted antisemitic tactics in the effort to squeeze out Jewish 
competitors. The anti- Jewish boycott campaign met with suc- 
cess in many parts of the Austro -Hungarian Empire. The Aus- 
trian antisemites publicized in the press and at public meetings 
the slogan, "Dont buy from Jews." When the government de- 
clared this slogan illegal, it was changed into "Buy from Chris- 
tians only." In Bohemia and Moravia the anti- Jewish boycott 
spread under the slogan "Each to his own' (svuj k svemu), at 
a time when the rising bourgeoisie sought to obtain an exclu- 
sive position in the economy, especially in trade. 

Shortly before World War 1 the Ukrainian population of 
Galicia was swept into a boycott movement instigated because 
of alleged Jewish collaboration with the Poles. At the same 
time, some Polish public figures in Galicia (for instance, the 
priest Stojalkowski) proposed the boycott as a form of defense 
for the Polish population against alleged Jewish exploitation. 
In Russia, the boycott did not attain significant proportions, 
despite the strongly nationalist and anti-Jewish stand of the 
Russian merchants. The system of legal and administrative re- 
strictions against the Jews already operating in Czarist Russiaa 
was more efficient than any form of boycott. A similar situa- 
tion existed in Romania, where the Jews had been deprived 
of all rights of citizenship and were considered "foreigners" 
in the legal sense. They were not allowed to practice the lib- 
eral professions, or keep tobacconist shops (which were a state 
monopoly), pharmacies, etc. Following the Russian example, 
Romania introduced the numerus clausus in educational in- 
stitutions. Jewish factory owners were obliged by law to em- 
ploy two-thirds non-Jewish workers. In 1907 "foreigners" were 
prohibited from holding agricultural farms on lease. The anti- 
Jewish boycott drive was especially intensive in Polish areas, 
which at that time did not form a national state. The news- 
paper Rola y which began publication in the 1880s, proposed 
the slogan of "Polonization" of trade and industry. Develop- 
ments took a decisive turn in the following decade when the 
National Democratic Party (Narodowa Demokracja y "nd," 
"En-deks"), led by Roman Dmowski, appeared on the politi- 



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BOYCOTT, ANTI-NAZI 



cal horizon. Initially the Endeks did not come out with anti- 
semitic slogans and confined their campaign to the "Litvaks," 
Jews from Russia, whom they accused of promoting the Rus- 
sification of Poland. 

The crushing of the 1905-07 revolution in Russia was also 
a major setback to the aspirations of the Polish community 
for political liberation, and it now began to interest itself ex- 
clusively in economic problems. The Endek party campaigns 
became increasingly aggressive, adopting the slogans "Each 
to his own," "Don't buy Jewish," and "Buy Christian only." 
The boycott also spread to cultural life, giving birth to nu- 
merous exclusively "Catholic" or "Christian" organizations. 
The anti- Jewish boycott received wide public support after 
1912 in connection with the elections for the Fourth Russian 
*Duma. The Jewish voters did not support the candidate put 
up by the rightist Polish party, and their votes secured the elec- 
tion of the Socialist candidate. In retaliation the rightist press 
started an intensive anti-Jewish campaign, proclaiming the 
beginning of the "Polish -Jewish War." The boycott in Polish 
areas appears to have been coordinated with the antisemitic 
campaign simultaneously unleashed in Russia in connection 
with the *Beilis case. 

Between the two world wars anti-Jewish boycott agita- 
tion continued particularly in Poland where the situation de- 
teriorated in the wake of economic difficulties, especially fol- 
lowing the depression. In an endeavor to soft-pedal the rising 
social tension, rightist antisemitic circles, with the silent ap- 
proval of the authorities, pointed at the Jews as the cause of the 
distress of millions of unemployed. Taking over trade from 
the Jews was made to serve as a panacea for rampant poverty 
and unemployment. After the Nazi rise to power in Germany 
the government publicly announced a general anti- Jewish 
boycott. Nazi agitators urged boycotting the Jews at mass 
meetings. On Sunday, April 1, 1933, uniformed Nazi pick- 
ets appeared in front of Jewish shops, attacked their clients, 
and wrote anti- Jewish slogans on their windows. The offices 
of Jewish doctors, lawyers, and engineers were also pick- 
eted. The official German policy roused antisemitic circles in 
neighboring countries to more extreme action. The anti-Jew- 
ish boycott in Poland gathered strength in imitation of the 
Nazi example, and Polish antisemitic groups began to adopt 
active boycott pressure. Pickets appeared in front of Jewish 
shops and stalls and terrorized the Jewish merchants as well 
as their non-Jewish clients. The rising number of incidents 
sometimes resulted in the destruction of shops and goods and 
also an occasional bloody pogrom, as at Przytyk and Wysokie 
Mazowieckei. 

Anti-Jewish boycott activities received the stamp of offi- 
cial approval in Poland in 1937, when Prime Minister Slawoj- 
Skaladkowski let drop in his notorious statement the slogan 
"economic boycott? - please!" The Polish government also at- 
tempted to step up Jewish emigration from Poland by means 
of economic strangulation. The boycott did not greatly affect 
Jewish industrialists and big businessmen, with whom the 
most rabid propagandists of the anti-Jewish boycott move- 



ment not infrequently had secret commercial ties. However, it 
weighed heavily on hundreds of thousands of small business- 
men, artisans, and others. The anti-Jewish boycott - frequently 
referred to as the "cold pogrom" in the inter- war press - un- 
dermined the foundations of the livelihood of hundreds of 
thousands of Jews. 

bibliography: je, s.v. Anti-semitism; ej, s.v. Anti-semi- 
tismus; Dubnow, Weltgesch, 10 (1929), 121 and passim; I. Schipper 
(ed.), Dzieje handlu zydowskiego na ziemiach polskich (1937); Elbo- 
gen, Century, 639-44; H.G. Reissner, in: Jubilee Volume ... Curt C. 
Silberman (1969). 

[Pawel Korzec] 

BOYCOTT, ANTI-NAZI. In protest against anti-Jewish ex- 
cesses in Germany after the Nazi Party's victory at the polls 
on March 5, 1933, Jews throughout the world held mass ral- 
lies, marches, and a spontaneous anti-German boycott. This 
boycott developed into an organized movement after the de- 
monstrative all-day boycott of the Nazis against German Jewry 
on April 1. The boycott proclamation of March 20 by the Jews 
of Vilna marked the launching of the boycott movement in 
Europe; Warsaw followed six days later. Soon the movement 
embraced virtually all Poland and was subsequently consoli- 
dated by the United Boycott Committee of Poland. This boy- 
cott movement was short-lived, however, for in January 1934, 
Poland signed a ten -year no n aggression pact with Hitler, in 
which cessation of boycott activities was stipulated as a pre- 
condition. Under Poland's premier, Jozef Pilsudski, the pro- 
vision was ignored. But in June 1935, about a month after his 
death, the United Boycott Committee was liquidated. 

A mass boycott movement in England first began in 
the Jewish quarter of London's East End on March 24, 
1935. The English-German fur business practically ceased as 
a result. The boycott groups included the Capt. Weber Boy- 
cott Organization, the World Alliance for Combatting Anti- 
Semitism, the British Anti-War Council, and the Anglo-Jew- 
ish Council of Trades and Industries. However, the *Board 
of Deputies of British Jews opposed the boycott throughout 
the 1930s. 

In France, boycott sentiment was not as intense as in Po- 
land or England; nevertheless, on the eve of the April 1 boycott, 
French Jewry warned that it would counterboycott the Reich 
if the Nazis carried out their plans, and they executed their 
threat by action similar to that of London's East End Jews. Two 
of France's most active boycott groups were the International 
League against Anti-Semitism, and the Comite de Defense des 
Juifs Persecutes en Allemagne. However, the ^Alliance Israelite 
Universelle remained opposed to the boycott. At the end of 
March 1933, the anti-Nazi boycott movement spread to Roma- 
nia and Yugoslavia, eventually encompassing the Jewish com- 
munities of Egypt, Greece, Latvia, Morocco, Palestine, several 
Latin American countries, and the United States. 

In the United States the anti-Nazi boycott reached its 
peak. America's first established boycott group was the ^Jew- 
ish War Veterans (March 19, 1933), followed by the American 



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BOYCOTT, ARAB 



League for the Defense of Jewish Rights (aldjr), a new or- 
ganization founded by the Yiddish journalist, Abraham Cor- 
alnik, in May 1933. Three months later the ^American Jewish 
Congress (ajc) made a boycott declaration and subsequently 
created a Boycott Committee. In October, the American Fed- 
eration of Labor, a non- Jewish workers organization, also an- 
nounced that it was in favor of the boycott. The aldjr was 
first led by Coralnik, and after six months by attorney- at-1 aw 
Samuel Untermyer. In a move intended to alter the Leagues 
Jewish character, Untermyer changed its name to the "Non- 
Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights." In 
1934 the * Jewish Labor Committee (jlc) was created claiming 
to represent about 500,000 Jewish workers, and it immediately 
initiated a boycott program. Two years later, the organizations 
central body for boycott activities combined with the Con- 
gress' Boycott Committee to form the Joint Boycott Coun- 
cil (jbc). The Council and the League proved to be Ameri- 
cas principal boycott organizations; the Jewish Veterans and 
other boycott groups that arose in the late 1930s cooperated 
with or joined these two organizations. However, attempts to 
unite the Council and the League were unsuccessful, the two 
organizations acting separately in consolidating the boycott 
on an international level. 

The Joint Boycott Councils chairman, Joseph Tenen- 
baum, obtained passage of a boycott resolution at the *World 
Jewish Congress (wjc) in 1936. This was a reaffirmation of a 
worldwide boycott resolution adopted by the Second Prelim- 
inary Conference (1933), preceding the establishment of the 
wjc. Also in 1936, Coralnik and Untermyer convened a World 
Jewish Economic Conference in Amsterdam to coordinate the 
growing international boycott movement and help find for 
the boycotting businessmen substitutes for former German 
sources of supply. To this end, the Conference created a World 
Jewish Economic Federation, presided over by Untermyer. 
In keeping with his view that the boycott was a nonsectarian 
movement, Untermyer changed the Federations name to the 
"World Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi Council to Champion Hu- 
man Rights." American Jewry's failure to form a united boy- 
cott front did not prevent the movement from achieving suc- 
cess. Thus eventually the department store colossi of Macys, 
Gimbels, Sears and Roebuck, Woolworth, and others gave in 
to continued boycott pressure. 

There is evidence that the Nazis, at least during the first 
two years of their regime, feared that a tight boycott would 
cripple their economy. Regarding the United States, for ex- 
ample, a memorandum prepared for Hitler by the Economic 
Policy Department of the Reich as late as November 18, 1938, 
cited the following comparative figures, which it attributed 
partly to the boycott: 



Year 



1929 



1932 



1937 



Import from the U.S. 
Export to the U.S. 



1,790* 
991 



592 
281 



282 
209 



In millions of Reichsmarks 



In January 1939 dissolution of the *Bnai Brim in Ger- 
many moved its American counterpart to join the boycott 
movement. However, the American Jewish Committee re- 
mained unalterably opposed to the movement throughout 
the Nazi era. In the United States, a non-belligerent until Pearl 
Harbor, the boycott was continued until 1941. 

bibliography: M. Gottlieb, "Anti-Nazi Boycott Movement 
in the American Jewish Community, 1933-1941" (Ph.D. dissert., 
Brandeis Univ., 1967); B. Katz, "Crisis and Response" (M.A. the- 
sis, Columbia Univ., 1951); J. Tenenbaum, in: Yad Vashem Studies, 3 
(1959), 129-46; S. Wise, Challenging Years (1949), ch. 15; ajhsq, 57 

(June, 1968). 

[Moshe Gottlieb] 

BOYCOTT, ARAB. The Arab boycott against Israel is the 
longest-functioning example of economic sanctions against 
a state. It both constituted a supplement to military force 
against Zionism and was a means of hampering Israels eco- 
nomic development. The boycott also enabled greater Arab 
integration at a time when pan-Arabism was the official pol- 
icy of several Arab states. 

The official boycott was declared in the *Arab League 
Council in December 1945, almost three years before Israeli 
independence, but the roots were established long before. In 
1910, the Haifa newspaper al-Carmel encouraged "an eco- 
nomic boycott against the Jews by not purchasing from or sell- 
ing to them and not leasing properties." Since the Arab Revolt 
in Palestine in 1936, the boycotts against Jewish merchandise 
had gathered strength. 

Scholars speak of three different boycotts. First, the 
primary boycott barred direct Arab commercial and finan- 
cial transactions with the Jewish community in Palestine, and 
later Israel, as well as postal, radio, and telegraphic communi- 
cations. After the declaration of Israeli independence, the sec- 
ondary boycott blacklisted companies that invested in Israel 
or traded with Israel. A land, air, and sea blockade was im- 
posed. In 1950, the Arab League Council declared that all ships 
carrying goods or immigrants to Israel would be blacklisted. 
The tertiary boycott targeted companies that traded with boy- 
cotted companies. Finally, before the Oslo accords of 1993, there 
was also what has become known as the voluntary boycott. 
Countries such as Japan voluntarily abstained from close rela- 
tions with Israel for fear of being boycotted or damaging their 
own economic relations with the oil-producing countries. 

The Arab League Council Resolution 357 of May 19, 
1951, established a Central Boycott Office (cbo) in Damas- 
cus, along with a Boycott Commissioner. Liaison officers had 
branch offices in each member state and third party offices 
were opened, for example, in i960, in New Delhi. By 1954, 5.7 
per cent of the Arab League budget was allocated to the cbo 
in Damascus, and by 1979, the cbo had 20 employees, five with 
diplomatic status. In 1981 the boycott office in Damascus was 
supplemented by an Islamic Office for the boycott of Israel, 
affiliated to the Islamic Conference Organization. Non-Arab 
states that actively participated in the boycott included Ban- 
gladesh, India, Malaysia, Mali, Pakistan, and Uganda. 



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BOYCOTT, ARAB 



The cbo chaired a conference biannually in one of the 
Arab capitals. It adopted decisions regarding companies con- 
sidered in breach of the boycott, coordinated policy, and drew 
up blacklists. Letters were then sent out to offending com- 
panies demanding proof they had broken off relations with 
Israel. If the company did not comply, it was boycotted by the 
Arab League. No private or public Arab body was allowed to 
trade with the company under threat of fines, imprisonment, 
and confiscation of goods. These meetings were backed up 
by legislation in each member state. Companies seeking new 
trade relations with the Arab world had to go through a long 
procedure related to the boycott. 

Boycott activities intensified throughout the 1950s. On 
December 11, 1954, the Arab League passed the Unified Law 
resolution for the boycott of Israel. The new law prohibited 
all Arab individuals and entities from dealing with agencies 
or persons working on behalf of Israel or with foreign com- 
panies and organizations having interests, branches, or agen- 
cies in Israel. The overriding aim was to prevent investment so 
that the country could not develop. Exports of Arab goods to 
countries re-exporting to Israel were also prohibited. In 1958, 
the boycott was extended to goods produced from Israeli raw 
materials as well as foreign ships that had visited an Arab and 
Israeli port in the same sailing. 

Each member state had additional legislation. Egypt au- 
thorized the seizure and impoundment of cargoes with Israeli 
destinations, regardless of the ships nationality. On February 
6, 1950, Egypt banned ships suspected of violating the block- 
ade of Israel from the Suez Canal. By 1955 this list included 104 
ships. Egypt was particularly careful to prevent the shipment 
of strategic goods, such as oil, to Israel. In November 1953, it 
extended the term contraband to include "any foodstuffs or 
other commodities likely to strengthen the war potential of 
the Zionists." Captains of vessels and tankers had to guarantee 
that they would not discharge any of their cargo in an Israeli 
port and had to submit log books. 

In the course of the 1960s, a growing number of Ameri- 
can films and actors, including Marilyn Monroe, were banned 
because the films allegedly contained Zionist propaganda or 
because the actors were considered pro-Israel or helped col- 
lect donations for Israel. Louis Armstrong was banned for 
performing in Israel. 

There were notable successes for the boycott. A British 
Foreign Office report records that the Lebanese Department 
of Civil Aviation had approached boac, Cyprus Airways, klm, 
sas, Air France, Pan American, and twa to boycott Israel 
and not to invest in the country. In 1957, the Arab League an- 
nounced that its members would henceforth deny overnight 
and landing rights to Air France. After resisting the boycott 
for one and a half years, Air France finally caved in at the 
end of 1958. 

Israel invested considerable effort to convince the inter- 
national community to ban the boycott. On September 1, 1951, 
the un Security Council demanded that Egypt terminate its 
restrictions on navigation through international waterways. 



The resolution was ignored. The fight against the boycott was 
a lost cause because of the strength of resistance to Israel in 
the Islamic world. Israels solution was to develop an economy 
detached from its neighbors - a process started in 1936 with 
the construction of the port of Tel Aviv. Avoiding the second- 
ary and tertiary boycotts was more complex. 

The success of the secondary and tertiary boycotts de- 
pended on the support of other states. The boycott organizers 
placed economic pressure on companies, which were in turn 
asked to put pressure on their governments, or at least not to 
implement anti-boycott legislation. There were a number of 
international protests, although the Soviet Union tried to in- 
tensify the boycott. In 1950, Britain, Norway, and the U.S. com- 
plained to Egypt about the banning of tankers from the Suez 
Canal. A Security Council resolution of 1956 ordered Egypt to 
lift the blockade. Except for the years 1957-59, in the wake of 
the Suez War, the Canal remained closed to Israeli ships and 
ships bound for Israel. 

There is no clear legal consensus on the boycott. Arabs 
argued that the laws of war entitled a state both to impose an 
economic boycott and take action against non-neutral third 
parties. Israel argued that the secondary and tertiary boycotts 
contradicted international agreements such as articles 11 and 
12 of gatt and the Treaty of Rome. In 1976, the U.S. started 
passing anti-boycott legislation, regulations, guidelines, and 
executive orders. In 1977, anti-boycott provisions were added 
to the Export Administration Act. Some European countries 
such as France, Germany, and the Benelux countries also 
passed some legislation. 

In February 1975, the Arab League adopted a resolution 
calling for the intensification of the boycott, particularly in the 
sphere of international financing. Fourteen banks were on the 
list, including some of the largest and most famous interna- 
tional banks. In one case the Kuwait International Investment 
Company (kiic) worked with Warburg and Rothschild on a 
$75 million international bond issue to raise capital for Volvo 
and the state of Mexico. The cbo forced the kiic to withdraw 
the loan issue. Entering an indirect contractual arrangement 
as co-manager with a blacklisted underwriter constituted a 
violation of the boycott. 

It was during the 1970s that the first cracks became ap- 
parent in the primary boycott. Even at the height of the boy- 
cott, there was some trade with Jordan through the "Open 
Bridges" on the Jordan River and the "Good Fence" between 
Israel and Lebanon after 1975. There was always trade through 
third parties. 

The secondary boycott was also often erratically applied. 
Towards the end of the 1970s six Arab League members, Al- 
geria, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, and Tunisia 
complied only with the primary boycott. In the late 1980s, 
despite the fact that the cbo refused to remove Coca-Cola 
from the blacklist, the company claimed that it was doing 
business with 11 Arab states, launched an advertising cam- 
paign in Bahrain, and opened bottling and canning plants in 
several Gulf states. 



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BOZECCO, BENJAMIN BEN JUDAH 



The peace accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978 in- 
cluded an undertaking to cancel the boycott. In reaction, the 
Baghdad Arab Summit Conference in March 1979 decided to 
impose economic sanctions against Egypt. However, even after 
the peace treaty most of Egypt continued with the boycott de 
facto. In the five years after the peace treaty, American com- 
panies received nearly 500 requests for boycott compliance. 
As late as 1988, three Egyptian companies with direct contacts 
with Israel were blacklisted. 

The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon gave the boycott 
more impetus. By 1987, 26 countries in addition to the 22 mem- 
ber states of the Arab League boycotted Israel economically. 

The Gulf War marked a watershed. Although 1991 saw 
an intensification of the boycott, with another 110 companies 
added to the list, as a reaction to the large-scale Jewish im- 
migration to Israel from the former Soviet Union, this was a 
period of contradictory signals. Many important companies 
such as Coca-Cola were removed and there were a string of 
informal meetings between Israeli and Gulf officials. Saudi 
Arabia started to link the boycott to Israeli withdrawal from 
the West Bank and Gaza Strip. After the Declaration of Prin- 
ciples between Israel and the plo in 1993, the cbo was hardly 
able to raise a quorum. By 1994, Qatar confirmed negotiations 
with Israel to pipe natural gas to Israel via European destina- 
tions. On September 30, 1994, the Saudi foreign minister an- 
nounced the cancellation of the indirect boycott on Israel and 
on October 27, 1994, following the peace treaty with Israel, Jor- 
dan canceled the boycott. By the end of 1996, 14 Arab states 
had openly gone against boycott. Only eight Arab states con- 
tinued. The voluntary boycott crumbled in Japan, China, and 
Korea. Most of the major multi-nationals on the boycott list, 
including Cadbury, Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Ford, Fuji, 
Jaguar, Schweppes, and Xerox were removed. 

The treaty put the Palestinians in a difficult position. 
Continuing the boycott was important as a bargaining chip for 
final status negotiations but obstructed raising development 
money. However, the stalemate in the peace process in 1997 
revived the boycott. Saudi Arabia again announced penalties 
for importing Israeli goods. Then, after the breakdown of ne- 
gotiations with the Palestinians in 2000, several Arab states 
abruptly ended their contacts with Israel and reinforced the 
boycott. In March 2001, Arab heads of state reactivated the 
boycott in Amman, Jordan. As a result, Israeli trade repre- 
sentations in the Gulf states and parts of North Africa closed 
down. After years of declining representation, 19 Arab coun- 
tries attended the 72 nd conference of the cbo in April 2004. 
There were calls for a new boycott on Coca-Cola and Ford but 
anti-boycott laws had been tightened and Arab governments 
were more reluctant to enforce the provisions. 

Trade between Egypt and Israel remained low and de- 
creased considerably since the outbreak of the 2000 Intifada 
but was not discontinued. Trade levels between Jordan and 
Israel, on the other hand, increased rapidly after the creation 
of Qualified Industrial Zones offering special tax breaks for 
export items produced by Israeli- Jordanian ventures. 



Apart from the primary boycott that was still enforced in 
states with no relations with Israel, trade unions and profes- 
sional associations in every Arab country still implemented 
blacklists against individuals and companies with ties to Israel. 
These associations were particularly strong in Jordan and 
Egypt, the only Arab countries with full relations with Israel. 
For example, in 2004 the Egyptian pharmaceutical union 
called for a boycott of a U.S. drug company. In Jordan and 
Egypt, however, the trade unions and professional associations 
were more effective in implementing the boycott within their 
own countries than pressuring foreign companies or coun- 
tries. While the voluntary boycott has all but disappeared, the 
primary boycott was still widespread in countries with no for- 
mal relations with Israel. 

bibliography: K.W. Abbott, "Coercion and Communica- 
tions: Frameworks for Evaluation of Economic Sanctions," in: New 
York University Journal of International Law and Politics, 19 (1987): 
EH. Baisu, Al-Watan al-Muhtall Bayna Mutallabat Dam al-Sumud 
wa-Iltizamat al-Muqata c a al- Arabiyya, 42 (June 1985); Y. Ben-Po- 
rath, "The Entwined Growth of Population and Product, 1922-1982," 
in Y. Ben-Porath (ed.), The Israeli Economy - Maturing through Crises 
(1986); G. Feiler, From Boycott to Economic Cooperation: The Political 
Economy of the Arab Boycott of Israel (1998); J.T. Hamza, Al-Muqata c a 
al- Arabiyya li-Isra'il (1973); un Resolutions, Security Council, Series 1 
and 2, compiled and edited by D.J. Djonovich, v-viii. 

[Gil Feiler (2 nd ed.)] 

BOZECCO (Bozecchi), BENJAMIN BEN JUDAH (1290- 
1335), Italian grammarian and biblical exegete, who lived in 
Rome. His name probably derived from the town Buzecchio in 
the district of Forli, Italy, from which his family came. In one 
of his poems *Immanuel of Rome praises him as "the father of 
all the scholars in mathematics and geometry, preeminent in 
Bible and *masorah, whose talents and wisdom are unlimited" 
(cf. D. Yarden (ed.), Mahberot Immanuel ha-Romi, 1 (1957), 
229-31). Of his biblical commentaries only those to Proverbs 
and Chronicles have survived. Written apparently before 1312, 
they consist mainly of explanations of difficult verses and 
grammatical comments. He also completed the commentary 
to Kings left unfinished by * Isaiah Trani the Elder. His exege- 
sis is based upon the literal meaning, and he is considered a 
pioneer of this method among the Italian Bible commentators. 
In the introduction to his commentary on Proverbs he em- 
phasizes his opposition to the homiletic method in exegesis, 
pointing out that most exegetes "follow the method of homi- 
letical exposition (derash) instead of the literal, and fail to pay 
attention to the significance of what the rabbis caMpeshat (lit- 
eral exposition), i.e., that which is pashut y simple and obvi- 
ous." Among his grammatical works are Mavo Kazar le-Torat 
ha-Higguiy on phonetics, published as an introduction to the 
Sefer ha-Dikdukim of Moses Kimhi (Venice, 1546) and Mevo 
ha-Dikduky a revised version and extensive summation of the 
former book (published by S. Loewinger, 1931). A commentary 
to Ezra and Nehemiah (published by Berger in Kobez al Jad y 
7 (1896-97); see Alberstamms note, p. 42) as well as various 
piyyutim are also attributed to him. 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



m 



BOZRAH 



bibliography: Guedemann, Gesch Erz, 2 (1884), 156; W. 
Bacher, in: rej, 10 (1885), 123-44; Vogelstein-Rieger, 1 (1896), 388-92; 
H. Berger, in: mwj, 16 (1889), 207-54; idem, in: mgwj, 45 (1901), 
138-65, 373-404; Davidson, Ozar, 4 (1933), 371; S. Loewinger, Ket 
kozepkori heber grammatikdrol (1931), 1-34. 

[Yehoshua Horowitz] 

BOZRAH (Heb. rm?). 

(1) A city in *Bashan, south of the *Hauran mountains. 
It is probably mentioned in the city list of Thutmose in (no. 



23) and the Tell *el-Amarna letters (ea 197) as Buzruna. It 
does not appear in the Bible but may be identical with Bosoa, 
where Jews lived in the time of the Hasmoneans (1 Mace. 5:26). 
Bozrah's great period began in 106 c.e. when the Nabatean 
kingdom was annexed to the Roman Empire and Trajan built 
a highway from Bozrah to Ai'la. He also established the camp 
of the Third Legion, "Cyrenaica," at Bozrah (Ptolemy 5:16, 4), 
and the city was then renamed Nova Trajana Bostra. Hadrian 
visited it in 129 c.e. Some time later it became the capital 




Bath —Roman and Christian 



2© m 

1 — .i. ... i i 

I 1 —I r r 



Remains of the ancient city of Bozrah, (1). After H. C. Butler, Architecture and Other Arts, Princeton University Press. 



114 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BOZYK, MAX 



of the province of Arabia, a position it retained until the end 
of Byzantine times (Eusebius, Onom. 10:46). From the third 
century onward, it was the seat of a Christian archbishop- 
ric and in the same century, was elevated to the rank of a 
Roman colony. In the fourth century, Bozrah was a flourish- 
ing city which had trade relations with Persia and Arabia. 
In the Roman and Byzantine periods, Jews lived at Bozrah and 
the community included many rabbis, such as Jonah, Eleazar, 
Berechiah, and Tanhum; others, among them Resh Lakish 
and Abbahu, visited the city since the local Jews seem to 
have been lax in their religious observances. The Babylonian 
Talmud (Shab. 29b) mentions a synagogue at Bozrah. Bozrah 
was the capital of the Ghassanid principality under Byzantine 
suzerainty. It was captured by the Arabs in 635 and retained 
its status as capital of the Hauran. It is today a village in Jor- 
dan called Busra- AskI Sham with about 2,000 inhabitants. 
The impressive archaeological remains of the ancient city 
include a wall, intersecting streets, a triumphal arch, a well- 
preserved theater, burial towers, baths (there are springs in 
the northwest of the city), and a large cistern, 485 x 62 ft. 
(148 x 19m.), from Roman times. A Christian cathedral, built 
in 512, contains one of the earliest known examples of a Byz- 
antine dome. A second church has a bell tower and a mon- 
astery called Deir (Dayr) Bahira after the monk with whom 
Muhammad is said to have lodged on his visit there. Around 
the Roman theater is a citadel erected in 1202 by the Mam- 
luk sultan al-Adil. Archaeological researches were conducted 
by the American University of Beirut between 1980 and 1984 
in the northwest area of the city, with the discovery of settle- 
ment remains from the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. A 
project of mapping and excavation at the site has been con- 
ducted by a Franco-Syrian team since the early 1980s, pro- 
viding much information about the Nab ate an -Rom an and 
Byzantine cities. 

(2) A city of *Edom. It is mentioned in the Bible in 
connection with the list of Edomite kings (Gen. 36:33) and 
in other passages (1 Chron. 1:44; Isa. 34:6, 63:1; Jer. 49:13, 
22; Amos 1:12). In ancient times Bozrah was a stronghold 
(hence its name, meaning "fort") guarding the roads from 
the plateau of Edom to the *Arabah. Archaeological re- 
mains have been discovered at a place which the locals call 
Busayra, located 6 miles (10 km.) south of Tafila. Surveyed 
by N. Glueck, the site was subsequently excavated by CM. 
Bennett between 1971 and 1974 and in 1980. The excavations 
revealed a major Edomite settlement in the Iron Age 11, with 
later remains from the Persian, Hellenisitic, and Roman 
phases. 

(3) A village on the southern border of Trachonitis. It is 
mentioned as Bosor (1 Mace. 5:26) and called Busr al-Hariri 
in Arabic. Jews who settled there in the time of *Judah Macca- 
bee appealed to him for help against their neighbors, and this 
help was promptly given. The name also occurs in the phrase 
"Trachonitis in the territory of Bozrah" (instead of "Bozrah in 
the territory of Trachonitis"?) in the list of the country s bor- 
ders (Tosef., Shev. 4:11; Sif. Deut. 11:21). 



bibliography: (1) R.E. Bruennow and A.V. Domaszewski, 
Provincia Arabia, 3 (1909), 1-84; H.C. Butler, Syria, vol. "Architecture" 
(1919), 215 ff.; Abel, Geog, 2 (1938), 286; J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches 
in Palestine (1941), 37-38; 94-95. H. Seeden, "Bronze Age Village Oc- 
cupation in Busra: aub Excavations on the Northwest tell, 1983-1984" 
in: Berytus, 34 (1986): 11-81; idem, "Busra 1983-1984: Second Ar- 
chaeological Report," Damaszener Mitteilungen, 3 (1988): 387-411; 
J-M. Dentzer, et al., "Nouvelles recherches franco -syriennes dans le 
quartier est de Bosra ash-Sham," in: Comptes Rendus des Seances de 
I'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1993), 117-147. (2) Glueck, 
in: aasor, 14 (1934), 78-79; 15 (1935), 83, 97-98; J.R. Bartlett, Edom 
and the Edomites (1989); R Bienkowski, "Umm el-Biyara, Tawilan and 
Buseira in Retrospect," in: Levant, 22 (1990), 91-109. (3) Abel, in: rb, 
32 (1923), 519; Press, Erez, 1 (1951), 64. 

[Michael Avi-Yonah / Shimon Gibson (2 nd ed.)] 

BOZRAH (Heb. rn^2)> moshav in Israel in the southern 
Sharon near Raananah, affiliated with Ha-Ihud ha-Hakla'i, 
the middle-class settlements association, founded in 1946 
by World War 11 veterans. After the War of Independence 
(1948) immigrants from Poland, Romania, and North Af- 
rica joined the settlement. The moshavs economy was based 
on intensive farming, including citrus groves, orchards, field 
crops, and beehives. The biblical name of the moshav (liter- 
ally "fortified place") coincides with that of the Iraqi town 
Basra, where the first settlers served with the British Royal 
Engineers Corps and organized themselves for future settle- 
ment. In 1969 the moshav numbered 425 inhabitants, increas- 
ing to 671 by 2002. 

website: www.hof-hasharon.co.il. 

[Efraim Orni] 

BOZYK, MAX (1899-1970), Yiddish comic actor. Born in 
Lodz, Bozyk was touring in Argentina when Poland was 
overrun by the Germans in 1939. He and his wife, Rose (Reyzl), 
reached New York in 1941 and soon became a popular comedy 
touring team in the U.S. and Canada. They performed together 
on the American- Yiddish stage for 30 years. Bozyk acted in 
such films as Castle in the Sky (1936), The Dybbuk (1937), The 
Jester (1937), Yiddel mit'n Fiddel (1936), Jolly Paupers (1938), A 
Brievele der Mamen (1938), Little Mother (1938), The Eternal 
Song (1939), and God, Man, and Devil (1949). With his wife, he 
appeared in the vintage musical Catskill Honeymoon (1949). 
Directed by Josef Berne, Catskill Honeymoon tells the story of a 
Jewish resort hotel that celebrates the 50 th wedding anniversary 
of a couple who are longtime clients by putting on a rollicking 
Borscht Belt show, replete with singers, dancers, comedians, 
and impressionists. The show's grand finale is a powerful musi- 
cal tribute to the year-old State of Israel. The movie was filmed 
at Youngs Gap Hotel in Parksville, New York. Plays in which 
Bozyk appeared in New York include Don't Worry, Brother! 
(1963) and The Travels of Benjamin in (1969). He was presi- 
dent of the Hebrew Actors' Club. His wife, rose (1914-1993), 
made her American film debut in 1988 in Crossing Delancey. 
In the role of Bubbie Kantor, Amy *Irving s grandmother, she 

is said to have stolen the show. 

[Ruth Beloff (2 nd ed.)] 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



115 



BOZZOLO 



BOZZOLO, town in Lombardy, northern Italy. Jewish set- 
tlement in Bozzolo began in 1522 with the arrival of Jewish 
loan bankers, who had close connections with the Jews in the 
nearby duchy of *Mantua. During the 17 th and the first half of 
the 18 th century, a small but prosperous community existed in 
Bozzolo, mainly occupied in banking, commerce, and farm- 
ing of the customs dues. By the first half of the 17 th century, 
the influential Finzi family was able to build a rich network of 
commercial, economic, and cultural activity, such as the pro- 
duction, manufacture, and trade of silk. They founded a com- 
pany that set up all the mulberry plantations in Bozzolo, 
Sabbioneta, and Rivarolo. At the end of 18 th century, under 
Austrian rule, the economic and commercial importance 
of Bozzolo progressively diminished and the Jews began to 
leave and move to Mantua or Milan. In the 1820s 135 Jews 
lived in Bozzolo and a new cemetery was opened, at the edge 
of the town, with a stone plaque of the burial society trans- 
ferred there from the old graveyard and affixed to the lodge at 
the entrance, reading: "Hevrat Gemilut Hasadim, in the 
month of Menahem, in the year 5532" There is also evidence 
of a Jewish cemetery with three tombstones from the 18 th cen- 
tury which had been converted into a private vegetable gar- 
den. There were no Jews left in Bozzolo by the beginning of 
the 20 th century. 

bibliography: S. Simonsohn, Toledot ha-Yehudim be-Duk- 
kasut Mantovah, 2 (1965), index; Milano, Italia, index; Archivio 
Storico di Milano, Culto, Parte moderna, b. 2912, fasc. "Mantova," 
Regia delegazione provinciale, 15 May 1819; P. Bernardini, Sfida 
delVuguaglianza. Gli ebrei a Mantova nelletd della rivoluzione fran- 
cese (1997), 312-15. 

[Federica Francesconi (2 nd ed.)] 

BRACH, SAUL (1865-1940), rabbi in Slovakia. He served as 
rabbi in the Hungarian communities of Nagykaroly and Du- 
naszerdahely, and, finally, in Kosice, Czechoslovakia. His Avot 
al Banim (1926) is prefaced by a violent attack on the Zionist 
movement (the Mizrachi and Agudat Israel included). Here 
he states that believers in the law of Moses "should keep their 
distance from Zionists and Mizrachist homes and avoid eat- 
ing and drinking with them as they would with gentiles. Fur- 
ther, they ought to be excluded from the community" (p. 27). 
Although he fully appreciated the Hebrew language, he op- 
posed its secular use (p. 23). In his opinion the Balfour Dec- 
laration was "in the interest of the gentile world, its purpose 
being to rid the nations of the world of the Jews." He was the 
author of many works, among them: (1) Mishmeret Elazar 1897 
and subsequent parts, on the festivals and "the excellence of 
the Holy Land"; (2) Libba Baei (1911), novellae on talmudic 
themes; (3) Shabl Sha'al (1911), on Yoreh Dean; (4) Le-Olam 
ha-Ba (1938), on Avot', and a series of works on the festivals 
and the month of Elul. 

bibliography: S.B. Sofer-Schreiber, Ketov Zot Zikkaron, 
(New York, 1957), 280. 

[Naphtali Ben-Menahem] 



BRADFORD, city in Yorkshire, England. A Jewish com- 
munity existed in Bradford by the middle of the 19 th century, 
composed largely of German Jews attracted by the industrial 
and commercial growth of the city. Services are said to have 
been held in Bradford in the 1830s, but the first synagogue was 
built in 1873. A Reform community (after that of London, the 
second in England) was founded in 1880. The Jewish popula- 
tion was later reinforced by refugees from the Russian perse- 
cutions. The German Jewish group was of great significance in 
the cultural life of the city. The artists Sir William *Rothenstein 
and Albert Rutherston were born in Bradford. The poet Hum- 
bert *Wolfe went to school there and described his childhood 
in his autobiography (Now a Stranger, 1933). Jacob *Moser 
was lord mayor of Bradford in 1910-11. The Jewish population 
numbered about 700 in 1968 but dropped to approximately 170 
in the mid-1990s. Nevertheless, the optional religious ques- 
tion asked for the first time in the 2001 British census found 
356 declared Jews in Bradford. In 2004 an Orthodox and Re- 
form synagogue existed. 

bibliography: V.D. Lipman (ed.), Three Centuries of Anglo- 
Jewish History (1961), 84, 100 n. 48; Lehmann, Nova Bibl. 78, 185, 214. 

ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: JYB, 2OO4. 

[Cecil Roth] 

BRAFMAN, JACOB (c. 1825-1879), Russian apostate and 
antisemitic author. Orphaned at an early age, Brafman fled 
from his native city of Kletsk to evade being forced into mili- 
tary service by the agents of the community (see *Cantonists). 
He became embittered by his experiences, and conceived a 
hatred for the Jewish community and its institutions. At the 
age of 34 he joined the Greek Orthodox Church and was ap- 
pointed Hebrew teacher at the government theological semi- 
nary in Minsk. He later served as censor of Hebrew and Yid- 
dish books in Vilna and St. Petersburg. Brafman attacked the 
Jewish communal organization (kahal) in Russian periodicals, 
describing the ^Society for the Promotion of Culture among 
the Jews in Russia and the ^Alliance Israelite Universelle, as 
"a state within a state." He alleged that they formed part of an 
international Jewish conspiracy. In 1869, Brafman published 
with official support and at government expense Kniga Kagala 
("The Book of the Kahal"), a translation into Russian of the 
minutes (Pinkas) of the kehillah of Minsk. A second, enlarged 
two-volume edition was published in 1875; the first volume, 
containing essays on Jews and Jewish customs, was published 
posthumously with an introduction by Brafman's son (1882). 
The book, translated into French, Polish, and German, created 
a stir among Jews and Russians. It was presumed by Russian 
readers to give information about the "secret" customs of the 
Jews by which they allegedly acquired power over gentiles; 
antisemitic authors used it to justify anti-Jewish outrages. Al- 
though Brafman was accused of forgery, in fact his book was 
a fairly accurate translation of the documents. It has served a 
number of scholars as a historical source for knowledge of the 
inner life of Russian Jewry in the 19 th century. The impression 



116 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRAHAM, JOHN 



made by his book is evidence of the extent to which autono- 
mous Jewish community life was alien to modern centralis- 
tic political ideas, ideals, and modes of relationship between 
individuals and the state. The Russian poet V.R Khodasevich 
(1886-1940) was Brafmans grandson. 

bibliography: S.L. Zitron, Meshumodim (1923), 7-31; Levi- 
tats, in: Zion, 3 (1938), 170-8; S. Ginsburg, Meshumodim in Tsarishn 
Rusland (1946), 65-79; S.W. Baron, Russian Jew under Tsars and So- 
viets (1964), 49. 

°BRAGADINI, noble Venetian family; printers of Hebrew 
books from 1550 to 1710 (see Hebrew printing in * Venice). In 
1550 Alvise Bragadini published Maimonides > Code with an- 
notations by Meir *Katzenellenbogen of Padua. When the rival 
house of *Giustiniani issued Maimonides' Code in 1550, the 
resulting dispute, together with Moses Tsserles* decision in 
favor of Bragadini, led to a prolonged feud and denunciations 
to Pope Julius in, who eventually decreed the confiscation and 
burning of all copies of the Talmud in 1553. For ten years the 
printing of all Hebrew books was prohibited in Venice, and 
only in 1564 did Alvise Bragadini s press resume its activities. 
Alvise died in 1575. Hebrew printing continued under his son 
Giovanni from 1579 to 1614-15, and under Giovannis son or 
sons and grandsons until the 18 th century. H.J.D. *Azulai re- 
ports a visit to the Bragadini printing works. A great selection 
of Hebrew literature came from this press. 

bibliography: D.W. Amram, Makers of Hebrew Books in 
Italy (1909), 252-76, 363-75; C. Roth, Jews in Venice (1930), 2561!.; J. 
Bloch, Venetian Printers of Hebrew Books (1932), ljff. and passim; H.B. 
Friedberg, Toledot ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Italyah (1934), 53—55. 

BRAGANZA, town in northern Portugal. The royal privileges 
of 1187 spoke of the penalty to be inflicted if a Jew who came 
to the city was assaulted, from which it appears that no com- 
munity had yet been set up. In 1279 a number of Jews from the 
city, apparently recently arrived, paid King Denis handsomely 
for a charter of protection. Thereafter, there are frequent men- 
tions of the community. Under Alfonso iv (1325-1357) there 
were complaints by the populace against the rate of interest 
charged by the Jews, which was henceforth limited. In 1429 the 
comuna of the Jews of Braganza were given certain privileges 
by the Crown, confirmed in 1434 and 1487. In 1461 the com- 
munity, led by their rabbi, Jacob Cema (Zemah), assembled 
in a public square and appointed representatives to negotiate 
with the city authorities on matters in dispute. The rabbi in 
1485 was Abraham, the physician who purchased the wines 
produced by the royal estate adjacent to the "vineyards of the 
Jews." On the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, 3,000 
exiles arriving through Benavente are said to have established 
themselves in the region. After the forced conversion in Por- 
tugal in 1497, Braganza became one of the most important 
centers of crypto -Judaism in the country. Many Crypto -Jew- 
ish families retained their special identity, continuing to prac- 
tice some Jewish customs, uphold certain beliefs, and marry 



among themselves. Braganca was the place of origin of many 
important Converso families. It was in Braganca that Orobio 
de Castro, who died as a Jew in Amsterdam, was born in 1621. 
The number of Crypto-Jews in Braganca was very high, and 
some 800 local Judaizers appeared at various autos-da-fe in 
Portugal up to 1755. For example, more than 60 appeared in a 
single auto held at Coimbra on May 17, 1716. Traces of crypto- 
Judaism are still strong there, though attempts to establish 
some sort of organized Jewish life have failed. In 1920s ser- 
vices were still held in a place of worship, a synagogue where 
children received religious instruction. Special prayers were 
recited and the services were led by women. In the first half 
of the 20 th century descendants of Crypto-Jews still lived in 
their own quarter. 

bibliography: F.M. Alves, Osjudeus no distrito de Braganca 
(1925); J. Mendes dos Remedios, Os Judeus em Portugal, 1 (1895), 
138-9, 152; M. Kayserling, Geschichte der Juden in Portugal (1857), 
index; Portuguese Marranos Committee, London, Marranos in Por- 
tugal (1938), 5-8. add. bibliography: D.A. Canelo, Os ultimos 
criptojudeus em Portugal (2001). 

[Cecil Roth / Yom Tov Assis (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAHAM, JOHN (1774 or 1777-1856), English singer. The 
son of Abraham of Prosnitz (d. 1779), chorister of the Great 
Synagogue, London. Braham sold pencils in the street before 
being adopted by his fathers associate Meir *Leoni, who in- 
troduced him to the Great Synagogue as his assistant. Bra- 
ham made his first appearance on the stage in 1787 as "Master 
Braham", and in due course was taken under the patronage of 
Abraham * Goldsmid, who provided for his musical education. 
In 1797 he went to Italy and toured Europe with great suc- 
cess together with the celebrated Madame Storace (who bore 
him a son, later a Church of England clergyman). On his re- 
turn to England in 1801 he was hailed as the most remarkable 
singer of the time. It is said that no other English tenor has 
ever had so wide a vocal range. He himself composed many 
of the songs he sang, among them "The Death of Nelson," one 
of the most popular patriotic songs of the period. Although 
in later life Braham had little contact with Judaism, he col- 
laborated in 1815 with Isaac *Nathan in "Hebrew Melodies" 
for which Lord *Byron wrote the text. In 1835 Braham built 
the St. James* Theater in London, but the venture proved di- 
sastrous financially and in 1840 he tried, with little success, to 
recoup his fortunes by a concert tour in America. He contin- 
ued his platform appearances until shortly before his death. 
Brahams daughter, Francis Elizabeth, Countess Waldegrave 
(1821-79), was a notable society and political hostess in the 
mid-Victorian period. 

bibliography: J.J.M. Levien, Six Sovereigns of Song (1948), 
7-34; idem, Singing of John Braham (1945); C.W. Hewett, Strawberry 
Fair (1955); C. Roth, Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History 
(1962), 235-7; Sendrey, Music, index; Sands, in: jhset, 20 (1959-61), 
203-14; Grove, Diet. 

[Cecil Roth] 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



117 



BRAHAM, RANDOLPH LOUIS 



BRAHAM, RANDOLPH LOUIS (1922- ), historian of the 
Holocaust, distinguished professor emeritus of political sci- 
ence at the City College of New York and the doctoral pro- 
gram at the Graduate Center of the City University of New 
York. Braham was born in Bucharest (Romania) and lived 
until 1943 in Dej (Transylvania), from where he was sent by 
the Hungarian authorities to serve in a military forced labor 
battalion as a Jew who was not allowed to serve in his coun- 
try s armed forces. Shortly after World War 11 he left for the 
United States, where he began his academic studies in com- 
parative politics. After obtaining his Ph.D., he began to study 
the history of the Holocaust of Central European Jewry. His 
best-known work is The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in 
Hungary (1994 2 ). Studies on the Holocaust, two volumes of his 
selected writings, appeared in 2000 and 2001 and he edited 
numerous volumes on the subject. 

Among other things Braham discusses the disillusion- 
ment of the Jews of Northern Transylvania, who believed 
that the Hungary they encountered in 1940 was the Hungary 
they had known before 1919. They soon discovered that the 
antisemitic laws enacted there after 1919 were no better than 
those enacted in Romania between 1919 and 1940 and found 
themselves delivered into the hands of the Nazis by those same 
Hungarians in whose nobility they had fervently believed. An- 
other subject dealt with by Braham is the role played by the 
Romanian authorities under Antonescu in the murder of be- 
tween 290,000 and 390,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews, 
and which the post-1948 Communist regime tried to avoid 
recognizing. Braham was decorated by the presidents of both 

Hungary and Romania. 

[Paul Schveiger (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAHM, OTTO (originally Abrahamsohn; 1856-1912), 
German stage director and drama critic. Brahm was theater 
critic for the Frankfurter Zeitung, Vossische Zeitung, and Die 
Nation, and was one of the most influential champions of Ib- 
sen and the new naturalist school. He was cofounder and first 
president of Berlins Freie Buehne (1889), a private organiza- 
tion which performed Ibsen and other "modernists" such as 
Gerhart Hauptmann and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. With the 
publisher S. Fischer, he founded the monthly Freie Buehne fuer 
modernes Leben, later renamed Neue Deutsche Rundschau, as 
the mouthpiece of the naturalist revolution in literature. In 
1894 Brahm took over Berlins Deutsches Theater, moving to 
the Lessing Theater in 1904. With his productions of Ibsen, 
Hauptmann, and Schnitzler, he made Berlin one of Europe's 
theatrical centers. The "Brahm style," a rigorous stage realism 
expressing subtle psychological nuances, was adopted by the 
actors he trained. These included Max *Reinhardt and Albert 
Bassermann. His greatest triumph came in 1909-10 when, at 
the Lessing Theater, he staged a cycle of Ibsens 13 sociocriti- 
cal plays. Paul Schlenther collected Brahms outstanding re- 
views and literary essays in Kritische Schriften (2 vols., 1913-15), 
enlarged and revised by Fritz Martini, Otto Brahm, Kritiken 
und Essays (1964). 



bibliography: G. Hirschfeld, Otto Brahm, Brief e und Erin- 
nerungen (1925); M. Newmark, Otto Brahm, the Man and the Critic 
(1938); O. Koplowitz, Otto Brahm als Theaterkritiker (1936); W. Buth, 
Das Lessingtheater in Berlin unter der Direktion von Otto Brahm 
1904-1912 (1965). add. bibliography: H. Claus, The Theatre Di- 
rector Otto Brahm, Theater and Dramatic Studies 10 (1981); O. Seidlin, 
"Otto Brahm," in: The German Quarterly, 36 (1963), 131-40. 

[Oskar Seidlin / Bjoern Siegel (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAILA (Rom. Braila, Turk. Ibraila), port on the River Dan- 
ube, S.E. Romania; within the Ottoman Empire from 1544 to 
1828, in which year 21 Jewish families were living there. De- 
spite difficulties with the authorities the Jewish population 
grew after the annexation of Braila to Walachia and its de- 
velopment as an important commercial port. The number of 
Jews increased from 1,095 i n i860 to 9,830 (17.3% of the total 
population) in 1899. The majority were occupied in commerce 
and crafts; in 1889, 24.4% of the shops in the town belonged to 
Jews, and in 1899, 24.2% of the artisans were Jews. The first Re- 
form synagogue to be established in old Romania was opened 
in Braila in 1863. This led to a division of the community until 
a unified central administration was reestablished in 1905. In 
1930 there were 11,327 Jews living in Braila. Communal insti- 
tutions then included a kindergarten, two elementary schools 
(for boys and girls), a secondary school for boys, a clinic, and 
a night shelter. In the Holocaust period, the situation of the 
Jews deteriorated. On Sept. 30, 1940, the entry of the Jews into 
the port was forbidden. On August 4, 1941, forced labor groups 
were organized which included men between the ages of 18 
and 50. Many Jews were pauperized and the community had 
to help them. Two secondary schools were founded for Jew- 
ish pupils excluded from public schools. After the war (1947), 
5,950 Jews lived in Braila, among whom were former deport- 
ees to Transnistria. The number dropped to 3,500 by 1950. In 
1969 there were around 1,000 Jews in Braila, although most 
of the surviving Jews had settled in Israel. In 2004, there were 
141 Jews living there, with a functioning synagogue. 

bibliography: N.E. Derera, Monografia Comunitatii Israelite 
din Braila (1906); S. Semilian, Evrei in cadrul asezarii Brailei acum 

suta de ani (1936); Almanahul Ziarului Tribuna Evreiasca pe anul 
5698 (1937), 266-69; PK Romanyah, i, 78-88; M. Carp, Cartea Neagra, 

1 (1946), index; Pe marginea prapastiei, 1 (1942), 134, 224; W. Filder- 
man, in: Sliha, 1 (1956), no. 4. add. bibliography: I. Ursulescu, 
Valori ale patrimoniului evreiesc la Braila (1998); FEDROM-Comuni- 
tati evreiesti din Romania (Internet, 2004). 

[Eliyahu Feldman and Theodor Lavi / Lucian-Zeev 

Herscovici (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAILOV, small town in Ukraine. The community num- 
bered 638 in 1765 (living in 190 houses); 2,071 in 1847; and 3,721 
in 1897 (43% of the total population). In 1852, all 78 artisans in 
the town were Jews, and in the 1880s, Jews owned industrial 
enterprises such as a sugar refinery, brewery, flour mills, and 
tanneries, employing many Jewish workers. The town had a 
talmud tor ah, a school for boys, and one for girls. On the eve 
of wwi Jews owned all 19 grocery stores, all 16 textile shops, 



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BRAININ, REUBEN 



and the only pharmacy in the town. In 1918-19, during the civil 
war, about 26 Jews were massacred and around 100 women 
were raped in pogroms in Brailov, including one perpetrated 
by the *Petlyura gangs. The Jews in the town succeeded in 
warding off one attack. The Jewish population numbered 2,393 
in 1926. In the late 1920s, in the Soviet period, Jewish bread- 
winners were 31% artisans, 21% blue-collar workers, 17% small 
merchants, 9% clerks, and 21% unemployed (without civil 
rights). From the mid-i920s, there was a Jewish village coun- 
cil that conducted its proceedings in Yiddish. Brailov was oc- 
cupied by the Germans on July 17, 1941, and immediately 15 
Jews were shot. A ghetto was established and a heavy tribute 
was imposed on the population. On February 13, 1942, 1,500 
Jews were assembled; the sick and those discovered in hiding 
were shot on the spot. Around 300 artisans were sent back to 
the ghetto, joined by 200 still in hiding, and the remaining 
1,200 Jews were executed. On April 18, 180 Jews, mostly chil- 
dren and elderly persons, were murdered. The last group of 
503 (including 286 prisoners from *Zhmerinka) was executed 
on August 25, 1942. 

bibliography: A.D. Rosenthal, Megillat ha-Tevah, 1 (1927), 
91-94; Yevrei v S.S.S.R. (1929 4 ), 49; B. West (ed.), Be-Hevlei Kelayah 
(1963), 58-60. add. bibliography: pk Ukrainah, s.v. 

[Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAILOWSKY, ALEXANDER (1896-1976), U.S. pianist of 
Ukrainian birth. After study with his father, a professional pia- 
nist, Brailowsky continued his training at the Kiev Conserva- 
tory, graduating with a gold medal in 1911. Following advanced 
studies with Leschetizky in Vienna (1911-14) and Busoni in 
Zurich (1915), he completed his trainings with Plante in Paris, 
where he made his debut in 1919. 

An exceptionally successful international career was 
to follow. Brailowsky was one of the first pianists to present 
a complete cycle of Chopin s solo works. He played them in 
six recitals in Paris (1924) and later in New York, Buenos Ai- 
res, Brussels, Zurich, and Mexico City. He made a coast-to- 
coast tour of the U.S. in 1936. Brailowsky was noted for his 
strong virtuosic approach, extreme clarity of texture, cleanly 
articulated phrasing, and technical panache. His repertory 
encompassed many of the big virtuoso works of the Roman- 
tics. He was particularly admired for his playing of Chopin 
and Liszt. 

bibliography: Grove online; mgg; Bakers Biographical 

Dictionary (1997). 

[Naama Ramot (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAININ, REUBEN (1862-1939), Hebrew and Yiddish au- 
thor. Brainin was born in Lyady, Belorussia, and received a 
traditional Jewish education. His first article was on the last 
days of Perez *Smolenskin (Ha-Meliz (1888), no. 59). In 1892 he 
settled in Vienna where he published an influential but short- 
lived periodical Mi-Mizrah u-mi-Maarav (1894-99) which 
was intended to be a bridge between European and Hebrew 
literature. Only four issues were published at long intervals, 



with articles on Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Hebrew schol- 
ars such as *Elijah b. Solomon Zalman of Vilna. Brainin also 
published essays in the annual Ahiasaf. He attracted wide at- 
tention with his caustic critique of Judah Leib ^Gordon in the 
first issue of *Ha-Shilo ah (1896), edited by Ahad *Ha-Am. The 
central theme of Brainins work was Hebrew literature in the 
context of world literature. His flair for biography came to the 
fore in monographs on two great writers of the Haskalah pe- 
riod, Perez Smolenskin (1896) and Abraham *Mapu (1900), 
which possessed an unusual freshness of tone and approach. 
He championed the young and unknown Saul *Tchernich- 
owsky, who became one of the great Hebrew poets of the cen- 
tury. In Ha-Dor (founded in 1900), Brainin published articles 
and sketches on contemporary Hebrew writers and artists. 
There was hardly a Hebrew periodical of the time to which 
Brainin did not contribute. He also wrote extensively in Yid- 
dish and contributed articles to the Russian-Jewish press. In 
1909 Brainin settled in America where he founded the peri- 
odical Ha-Deror. He spent a few years in Canada, where he ed- 
ited two Yiddish papers: first the Kanader Adler (1912-15), then 
Der Weg (1915-16). He returned to New York and assumed the 
editorship of Ha-Toren (1919-25), first as a weekly, then as a 
monthly. In New York he also published the first volume of an 
uncompleted biography of Herzl, Hayyei Herzl (1919), cover- 
ing the period up to the First Zionist Congress. Toward the 
end of his life, Brainin wrote almost exclusively in Yiddish. 
His championship of the autonomous Jewish province of Bi- 
robidzhan in Soviet Russia alienated him from Hebrew writ- 
ers and Hebrew literature. The three volumes of his selected 
writings (Ketavim Nivharim y 1922-40) afford an insight into 
his activities as a critic, publicist, and writer of sketches and 
short impressionistic stories. He also translated into Hebrew 
M. Lazarus* Der Prophet Jeremias (1897) and Max Nordaus 
Paradoxes (1901). (For English translations of his works see 
Goell, Bibliography, 2010, 2763-73.) 

His son Joseph (1895-1970) was a U.S. journalist and 
publicist. Joseph, born in Vienna, served with the Jewish Bat- 
talion of the British forces in Palestine during World Wan. In 
1918 he obtained permission from the Canadian prime minis- 
ter to form a Jewish legion, which he recruited in Canada and 
the United States to reinforce the Jewish Battalion. In 1921 he 
emigrated to the United States and founded the Seven Arts 
Feature Syndicate. He served as its editor in chief until 1938. 
Joseph was associated with the American Committee for the 
Weizmann Institute of Science from 1953 and became execu- 
tive vice president in 1957. 

bibliography: B. Shelvin, R. Brainin (Heb., 1922); Wax- 
man, Literature, 4 (i960 2 ), 372-6; Z. Fishman, in: En Hakore, 1 (1923), 
105-18 (includes bibliography); Lachower, Sifrut, 3 pt. 2 (1963), 3-14; 
A. Shaanan, Ha-Sifrut ha-Ivrit ha-H\d\sh\h li-Zerameha, 2 (1962), 
158-66; M.J. Berdyczewski (Bin Gorion), Bi-Sedeh Sefer, 2 (1921), 
64-70; J. Fichmann, in: Ha-Tekufah, 12 (1921), 483-6; Kressel, Lek- 
sikon, 1 (1965), 350-3. add. bibliography: N. Karuzo, Mafteah la- 
Mikhtavim be-Yiddish u-ve-Ivrit bi-Yezirato shel R. Brainin (1985). 

[Eisig Silberschlag] 



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BRAMPTON, SIR EDWARD 



BRAMPTON (Brandon, Brandao), SIR EDWARD (c. 1440- 
1508), Anglo -Portuguese adventurer. Although his father was a 
Jewish blacksmith Brampton claimed to be the illegitimate son 
of a Christian nobleman. He was baptized in England c. 1468, 
taking the name of his godfather, King Edward iv. Subse- 
quently he received various military and naval commands 
and was rewarded with mercantile privileges and grants of 
land; in 1482 he became governor of the island of Guernsey 
and was knighted in 1484. Having been of service to Alfonso v 
of Portugal during the latter s exile in France, Brampton later 
returned to Portugal and was made a member of the Royal 
Council. His knowledge of the English court enabled him to 
assist Perkin Warbeck in his bid for the English throne as the 
alleged son of Edward iv. Brampton's family gained promi- 
nence in Portugal but suffered discrimination because of its 
Jewish origin, which it tried ineffectively to conceal. 

bibliography: Roth, in: jhset, 9 (1922), 143-62; 16 (1952), 
121-7; idem, Anglo-Jewish History (1962), 68-85; Marques de Sam- 
payo, in: Anais da Academia Portuguesa de Historia, 6 (1955), 143-65; 
E.E Jacob, Fifteenth Century (1961 2 ), 592-4. add. bibliography: 
odnb online. 

[Cecil Roth] 

BRAMSON, LEON (Leonty; 1869-1941), communal worker 
and writer. Born in Kovno, Bramson graduated in law from 
Moscow University, then settled in St. Petersburg, where he 
practiced, and was active in the ^Society for the Promotion 
of Culture Among the Jews. He was also director of the cen- 
tral committee of the * Jewish Colonization Association from 
1899 to 1906. Under his direction a statistical study was car- 
ried out on the economic situation of the Jews in Russia (pub- 
lished in Russian in 1904 and in French in 1906-8). He was 
one of the compilers of the Sistematicheskiy ukazatel literatury 
o yevreyakh na russkom yazyke ("Systematic Guide to Russian 
Literature About Jews," 1892), and contributed many articles to 
Voskhod and other periodicals on problems of Jewish educa- 
tion, emigration, and colonization. Active in Jewish political 
life, Bramson was one of the founders of the "Jewish Demo- 
cratic Group." In 1906 he was elected to the First Duma as a 
deputy for Kovno province, joining the Labor faction ("Tru- 
doviki"). During World War 1, the Revolution, and the Civil 
War, Bramson was an organizer of the Central Committee for 
the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers (*yekopo). When he left 
Russia in 1920, he continued to work in Western Europe on 
behalf of *ort (with which he had been associated in Russia 
from 1909), serving as its president from 1923 until his death. 
Bramson had been a convinced anti-Zionist, but changed his 
views after a visit to Erez Israel in 1934. 

bibliography: Yevreyskiy mir, 2 (1944), 7-54; S. Oron, in: 
He-Avar, 12 (1965), 191-8. 

BRAND, JOEL JEN 6 (1906-1964), member of Vaadat Ez- 
rah va-Hazzalah, the Budapest Jewish relief committee set up 
during World War 11 and the courier chosen by Adolph Eich- 
mann to offer Hungarian Jews in exchange for goods, in what 



became known as the "Blood for Trucks" offer. Brand, who 
was born in Naszod, moved to Erfurt, Germany, with his fam- 
ily in 1910. Active in Communist politics, he traveled to the 
United States, the Far East, and Latin America, returning to 
Germany in 1927. He was injured in a Communist-Nazi fight 
in 1933 but was expelled from Germany in the summer of 1934. 
He escaped to Transylvania and from there went to Budapest, 
where he joined *Poalei Zion, and at a Zionist training farm 
met Hansi Hartmann, whom he married in 1935. From 1938 
Brand was active in a semi-clandestine organization for help- 
ing Jewish refugees flee into Hungary, which until March 1944 
was allied with but independent of Germany. He established 
contact with Abwehr (German military intelligence) agents 
under Admiral Canaris who were then secretly working in 
Hungary. In January 1943 the Vaadat Ezrah va-Hazzalah was 
formally established in Budapest under the leadership of Otto 
*Komoly, aided by Rezso (Rudolf) *Kasztner. Brand was the 
main liaison between the Vaadah and the Abwehr, which had 
been disbanded in Febuary 1944. As a member of this com- 
mittee, Brand met Adolf *Eichmann, upon whose orders he 
left for neutral Turkey on May 17, 1944, to present the Jewish 
Agency with a German proposition to exchange the lives of 
Hungarian Jews for goods: Eichmann used trucks as an ex- 
ample, one million Jews for 10,000 trucks that would be used 
only on the Eastern front against the Soviet Union. Brand trav- 
eled to Turkey with Bandi Grosz, a double agent on a sepa- 
rate but not unrelated mission who was to initiate discussions 
with the Allies regarding a separate peace. With the German 
position collapsing after the defeats at Stalingrad and El-Ala- 
mein, the only hope for Germany to avoid total defeat was to 
split the British, American, and Soviet alliance. Eichmann was 
acting on the orders of *Himmler - without Hitler s knowl- 
edge and without the knowledge of the Foreign Office, which 
would have objected that the ss was moving in on its area of 
responsibility. The offer to rescue Jews may have been based 
on Himmler s exaggerated perception that Jews could effec- 
tively change American policy of total surrender, while the of- 
fer of a separate peace was rooted in the impending collapse 
of Germany. Upon arrival, Brand met with the representatives 
of the Jewish Agency in Istanbul, who understood the impor- 
tance of the offer and hoped to prolong the negotiations in 
order to forestall the deportation of Hungarian Jews, which 
commenced on May 15, two days before Brands departure. 
An emissary was immediately dispatched to Jerusalem to 
brief David *Ben-Gurion and Moshe Shertok (*Sharett). The 
Jewish Agency concluded that Shertok should travel immedi- 
ately to Turkey, but Turkish authorities refused to issue a visa. 
Brands offer was considered by the Americans and the Brit- 
ish, who were fearful that the transfer of so large a population 
would interfere with the war effort and who were as a matter 
of principle not interested in a separate peace. They sensed 
that the Germans were trying to create a wedge between the 
Allies and the Soviet Union and to blame the Allies for the 
failure to halt the deportation of Hungarian Jews. Thus, both 
missions were doomed to failure. American officials insisted 



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BRANDEIS, LOUIS DEMBITZ 



that the Russians be informed of the offer, which in essence 
gave the Soviet Union veto power. Their reasoning was that it 
was better for the Russians to hear of this offer directly from 
the Americans than to learn of it through their own intelli- 
gence services in Istanbul, where their suspicions would be 
aroused. Within weeks "the blood for goods" offer was leaked 
to the press; an article was published in the New York Herald 
Tribune. The London Times called the story one of "most loath- 
some of the war." Press exposure effectively killed any hope 
for the offer. Unable to have Shertok travel to Istanbul, Brand 
set off for Palestine. He was arrested in Aleppo, Syria, by the 
British, who claimed that they suspected him of being a Nazi 
agent, and was taken to Cairo. On October 7, 1944, some three 
months after the deportation of Hungarian Jews had ended, 
he was released in Jerusalem. 

Brand, a defeated and bitter man, remained in Erez Israel; 
he became a member of the Stern Gang and testified at the 
Kasztner trial in 1954. The Brand mission was featured prom- 
inently at the trial, though in the end it was not regarded as 
germane to the judgment. The Jewish Agency was accused by 
the defense of sabotaging the attempted rescue. Brand devoted 
himself single-mindedly to tracking down Nazi war criminals. 
Both Brand and his wife, who was also active in the Vaadat 
Ezrah va-Hazzalah, testified at the Eichmann trial that he had 
had direct contact with the accused. He died in Frankfurt, 
where he was testifying against Hermann Krumey and Otto 
Hunsche, two of Eichmanns chief aides. The story of Brand's 
mission was dramatized by Heinar Kipphardt in his play Die 
Geschichte eines Geschaefts (1965). 

bibliography: Weissberg, Advocate for the Dead (1958); E. 
Landau (ed.), Der Kastner-Bericht (1961); A. Biss, DerStopp derEnd- 
loesung (1966); Y. Bauer, Jews for Sale: Nazi Jewish Negotiatons 1933-45 
(1994); idem, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (1978); R. Bra- 
ham, Tlie Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (1993). 

[Michael Berenbaum (2 nd ed.)] 

BRANDAO, AMBROSIO FERNANDES (c. 1560-c. 1630), 
Portuguese author and soldier. Brandao distinguished himself 
as an officer in the Portuguese campaigns against the French 
and Indians in northern Brazil. In 1583 he lived in Pernam- 
buco (Recife) where, like many other New Christians of the 
region, he practiced Judaism in secret. For attending services 
at a clandestine synagogue Brandao was denounced to the In- 
quisition in Bahia in October 1591. His name was again men- 
tioned during the trial of another Judaizer, Bento *Teixeira 
Pinto, in January 1594 and he was once more denounced to the 
Holy Office in Lisbon in 1606. Brandao nevertheless managed 
to retain his freedom and eventually settled in Paraiba, where 
he owned sugar mills during the years 1613 to 1627. There he 
died prior to the Dutch invasion. Brandao is the reputed au- 
thor of the Didlogos das Grandezas do Brasil (1618), one of 
the two outstanding works on the history of Brazil composed 
in the 17 th century. In the Didlogos, which reflect local con- 
ditions in about 1618, conversations are conducted between 
Brandosio (i.e., Brandao himself) and Alviano (Nufio Alva- 



res, a colleague who was also a New Christian and was simi- 
larly denounced to the Holy Office). Brandao claimed that the 
Brazilian Indians are descended from children of Israel who 
reached the Americas during the reign of Solomon, but Al- 
viano disagreed with this view. The work contains a number 
of other references to the Jews. 

bibliography: A. Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (i960), 
19,26-8,32. 

BRANDEAU, ESTHER (18 th cent), first Jewish immigrant 
to New France. Esther Brandeau was the daughter of David 
Brandeau, a Jewish trader in St. Esprit, near Bayonne, France. 
She arrived at Quebec City in September 1738 on the ship 
Saint-Michel, disguised as a boy, Jacques LaFarge. When her 
gender was discovered the Intendant of New France ordered 
her arrested and held under surveillance at the Quebec hospi- 
tal. Brandeau had apparently lived as a Christian boy, mainly 
employed in the shipping trade, for five years before arriving 
in Quebec City. Since it was impossible for a Jew to remain 
in New France, strenuous efforts were made for more than a 
year to convert her but she refused to abandon her religion. 
She was finally deported to France with the cost of her return 
passage paid for by Louis x v. In a letter dated January 25, 1740 
the King wrote, "[the] Intendant of Canada, upon my orders 
sent the Jewish girl, Esther Brandeau, back to France on the 
ship, La Comte de Matignon y of New Rochelle, the owner of 
the ship, Sieur La Pointe, applied to me for reimbursement of 
the passage money.... " After her deportation in 1739 nothing 
further is known about her. 

bibliography: B.G. Sack, History of the Jews in Canada, 
trans. Ralph Novek, 2 vols. (1965), 1: 6-9; E. Taitz, S. Henry, and 
C. Tallan, "Esther Brandeau," in: The jps Guide to Jewish Women, 
600 B.C.E.-1900 c.e. (2003), 244. 

[Cheryl Tallan (2 nd ed.)] 

BRANDEIS, LOUIS DEMBITZ (1856-1941), U.S. jurist, the 
first Jew to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Early Years 

Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the youngest of 
four children of Adolph and Frederika Dembitz Brandeis. 
His parents, both of whom were born in Prague, came of old 
and cultivated Jewish families with a deep interest in Euro- 
pean liberalism. Apprehensive of political repression and eco- 
nomic distress after the failure of the 1848 revolutions, both 
families immigrated to America. Although they had formed 
the romantic idea of turning to a life of farming, they were 
dissuaded by Adolph, who had come in advance to explore 
the possibilities of life in the new country. After a short stay 
in Marion, Indiana, where a business venture did not prosper, 
the families moved to Louisville. There Adolph established a 
grain and produce business which proved highly successful 
until the depression of the early 1870s. 

Louis early showed himself to be a remarkable student. 
He was brought up in a family environment that cultivated 



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BRANDEIS, LOUIS DEMBITZ 



intellectual achievement and spiritual sensibility but in which 
formal religious training was eschewed. Louis' mother ex- 
plained this aspect of her children's education: "I wanted to 
give them something that neither could be argued away or 
would have to be given up as untenable, namely, a pure spirit 
and the highest ideals as to morals and love. God has blessed 
my endeavors." Louis especially admired an uncle, Lewis 
*Dembitz, a scholarly lawyer and author in Louisville, some- 
times known as "the Jewish scholar of the South," who was 
to become a follower of Theodor Herzl and an active Zionist. 
In honor of his uncle, Louis changed his middle name from 
David to Dembitz. 

Following his graduation from high school at 15, and 
after the family business was dissolved because of financial 
reverses, Louis accompanied his parents in 1872 on an ex- 
tended trip to Europe. During 1873-75 he attended the An- 
nen Realschule in Dresden. Although he found the demands 
of the classroom rewarding, the repressive discipline of the 
place was distasteful. He was eager to return home. "In Ken- 
tucky," he said, "you could whistle." On his return, influenced 
by his uncles career, Louis entered Harvard Law School. Sup- 
ported by loans from his older brother and earnings from tu- 
toring fellow students, he completed the course before his 21 st 
birthday with an academic record unsurpassed in the history 
of the school. 

Law Career 

Brandeis formed a law partnership in Boston with a former 
classmate, and by the age of 30 he had achieved financial in- 
dependence, thanks both to the success of his legal practice 
and to a deliberately frugal style of living. This simplicity 
came to be shared and abetted by his wife, Alice, daughter of 
Joseph Goldmark, a noted Viennese scientist. The wedding 
ceremony was performed in 1891 by her brother-in-law Felix 
*Adler, founder of the Ethical Culture Society. 

In appearance Brandeis was a figure at once compassion- 
ate and commanding - tall, spare, ascetic, with deep-set, dark, 
penetrating eyes. Many who saw him thought of Lincoln. Pres- 
ident Franklin Roosevelt spoke of him as "Isaiah." 

As a lawyer Brandeis devoted himself increasingly to 
public causes and to the representation of interests that had 
not theretofore enjoyed such powerful advocacy: the inter- 
ests of consumers, investors, shareholders, and taxpayers. He 
became known in Boston as the "Peoples Attorney." When 
Woodrow Wilson was elected president in 1912 on a platform 
of the New Freedom, he turned to Brandeis for counsel in 
translating ideas of political and social reform into the frame- 
work of legal institutions. In 1916 Wilson nominated Brandeis 
as a justice of the Supreme Court, precipitating a contest over 
confirmation in the Senate that lasted more than four months. 
The conservatives in that body were unprepared for a nomina- 
tion to the Court so deeply innovative: the nominee was a Jew, 
and he was a lawyer of reformist bent. Standing firm against 
great pressure to withdraw the nomination, Wilson insisted 
that he knew no one better qualified by judicial temperament 



as well as legal and social understanding, and confirmation 
was finally voted on June 1, 1916. 

Jewish and Zionist Activities 

Brandeis* involvement in Jewish affairs began only a few years 
before his appointment to the Court. He had never disavowed 
the faith of his fathers and had contributed to Jewish philan- 
thropies, but his concerns had been overwhelmingly secular. 
In 1911, he recounted, his interest in Judaism was stirred by two 
experiences. One was his service as mediator in the New York 
garment workers' strike, in an industry dominated on both 
sides by Jews of humble origin in Eastern Europe. He found a 
strong sense of kinship with these people, who were remark- 
able not only for their exceptional intelligence but above all 
for a rare capacity to see the issues from the other side's point 
of view. The other experience was a meeting with Jacob *De 
Haas, then editor of the Jewish Advocate in Boston, who had 
served as Herzl's secretary in London. De Haas was thoroughly 
familiar with the accomplishments of Lewis Dembitz in Ken- 
tucky, and excited in the nephew a new interest in Jewish his- 
tory and particularly in the Zionist movement. Brandeis, as 
was his habit, read everything on the subject that De Haas 
could furnish, footnotes as well as text, De Haas said, and be- 
came convinced that, so far from bringing a threat of divided 
loyalties, American and Zionist ideals reinforced each other. 
"My approach to Zionism," he said, "was through American- 
ism. In time, practical experience and observation convinced 
me that Jews were by reason of their traditions and their char- 
acter peculiarly fitted for the attainment of American ideals. 
Gradually it became clear to me that to be good Americans 
we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews we must become 
Zionists. Jewish life cannot be preserved and developed," he 
asserted, "assimilation cannot be averted, unless there be es- 
tablished in the fatherland a center from which the Jewish 
spirit may radiate and give to the Jews scattered throughout 
the world that inspiration which springs from the memories 
of a great past and the hope of a great future." 

Brandeis' rise to leadership in the movement was rapid. 
When war broke out in 1914 and certain leaders of the World 
Zionist Organization moved to America, Brandeis consented 
to serve as chairman of the Provisional Committee for General 
Zionist Affairs. He supported the convening of an American 
Jewish Congress representing all important Jewish groups in 
the country to give the widest support to Jewish interests at 
the peace conference. He thereby brought himself into con- 
flict with eminent non-Zionists in the United States. His close 
relations with President Wilson and high administrative of- 
ficials played an important part in securing support for the 
*Balfour Declaration, and later for the British Mandate, with 
adequate boundaries. 

Conflict within the Zionist Movement 

A turning point in Brandeis' leadership developed out of his 
relationship with Chaim *Weizmann. The two met for the first 
time in London in the summer of 1919, when Brandeis was 



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BRANDEIS, LOUIS DEMBITZ 



making a trip to Paris, site of the peace conference, and then 
to Palestine. In Palestine he was exhilarated by the spirit of the 
settlers but distressed by the debilitating prevalence of malaria 
and by the lack of business methods and budgetary controls 
in the handling of Zionist funds. He insisted that priority be 
given to remedying these physical and financial troubles. In 
the summer of 1920, at a meeting of the World Zionist Con- 
ference in London, Brandeis sought agreement on a plan to 
concentrate Zionist activity on the economic upbuilding of 
Jewish settlement in Palestine and to conduct that activity 
with efficiency and in accordance with sound financial prin- 
ciples. He proposed a small executive body that would include 
Weizmann and several men of great business experience, in- 
cluding Sir Alfred Mond and James de Rothschild, together 
with Bernard Flexner, an American lawyer, and others to be 
co-opted with the aid of Lord Reading. Weizmann was at first 
attracted to the plan because of the new strength it would give 
to the movement; but when he found his old colleagues from 
Eastern Europe offended because of their exclusion from the 
executive, he felt the tug of divided loyalties and expressed 
misgivings to Mond and de Rothschild, who withdrew be- 
cause of the prospect of internal strife. 

Brandeis was deeply disturbed by these developments 
and decided that he could not accept responsibility for the 
work of the World Organization; he consented to continue as 
honorary president only when persuaded that his withdrawal 
would have serious implications for the safety of the Jews in 
Eastern Europe. In June 1921, at a convention of American 
Zionists, the controversy brought serious repercussions. Many 
delegates had strong ties of loyalty to Weizmann and other 
Eastern European leaders, and shared Weizmanns view that 
the financial autonomy Brandeis desired for the American 
organization would weaken the strength of the World Orga- 
nization. When a majority of the delegates refused a vote of 
confidence to Brandeis* position, he resigned from any posi- 
tion of responsibility, although not from membership in the 
organization. In this action he was joined by his principal sup- 
porters, including Julian W. Mack, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Fe- 
lix Frankfurter, and Robert Szold. 

The ardor of Brandeis* commitment, however, did not 
slacken. He inspired the organization of the Palestine Co- 
operative Company, which became the ^Palestine Economic 
Corporation, to work in the investment field on projects that 
could become self-supporting, and the establishment of the 
Palestine Endowment Fund to administer bequests and trust 
funds primarily for projects not expected to yield a financial 
return. Brandeis contributed generously of his spirit and for- 
tune. In his will the largest bequest was to the Zionist cause. 
He continued to receive frequent calls for counsel, which he 
would give, consistent with his judicial office, generally in the 
form of searching questions that would clarify the problem 
for the inquirers own good judgment. 

Supreme Court 

In his judicial career, as in his Zionist activity, Brandeis was 



preeminently a teacher and moralist. His important judicial 
opinions are magisterial in character, notable not merely for 
their solid craftsmanship and analytical power but for their 
buttressing with data drawn from history, economics, and 
the social sciences. At a time when a majority on the Court 
was striking down new social legislation, Brandeis (together 
with his colleague Justice Holmes) powerfully insisted that 
the U.S. Constitution did not embody any single economic 
creed, and that to curtail experiment in the social sciences, 
no less than in the natural sciences, was a fearful responsibil- 
ity. Not only did Brandeis vote to sustain such measures as 
minimum wage laws, price control laws, and legislation pro- 
tecting trade unions against injunctions in labor disputes; his 
dissenting opinions in these cases served to illuminate their 
basis in experience and in social philosophy. These contro- 
versies arose under the vague constitutional standard of "due 
process of law." 

Another notable category of cases concerned the distri- 
bution of governmental powers between the national govern- 
ment and the states. Brandeis believed that the American fed- 
eral system was designed to encourage diffusion and sharing of 
power and responsibility, so he was receptive to the claims of 
the several states to engage in experimental legislation unless 
Congress itself had plainly exercised authority over the sub- 
ject matter. Deeply convinced that responsibility is the great- 
est developer of men, and that even in the ablest of men the 
limits of capacity are soon reached, he regarded the dispersal 
of power within a continental domain to be both a moral im- 
perative and a practical necessity. 

In one important field Brandeis saw a duty incumbent on 
the Court to be less hospitable to legislative intervention: the 
area of freedom of thought and expression. Only when speech 
constituted a genuinely clear and imminent danger to public 
order would he uphold its suppression. He believed that "the 
greatest menace to freedom is an inert people;... that order 
cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its 
infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope 
and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression 
breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the 
path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed 
grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting rem- 
edy for evil counsels is good ones" (Whitney v. California, 274, 
U.S. Reports 357, 375 (1927)). By the time of his retirement in 
1939, he saw the Court well on its way to the adoption of the 
positions he had for so long taken in dissent. 

bibliography: J. Goldmark, Pilgrims of 48 (1930); A.T. Ma- 
son, Brandeis: A Free Mans Life (1946); J. De Haas, Louis D. Brandeis 
(1929); O.K. Fraenkel (ed.), Curse of Bigness: Miscellaneous Papers of 
Louis D. Brandeis (1934); E. Stern, Embattled Justice (1971); M. Urofsky, 
A Mind of One Piece, Brandeis and American Reform (1971); Y. Sha- 
piro, in: ajhsq, 55 (1965/66), 199-211; E. Rabinowitz, Justice Louis D. 
Brandeis, the Zionist Chapter of His Life (1968); A. Friesel, Ha-Tenuah 
ha-Ziyyonit be-Arzot ha-Berit ba-Shanim 1897-1914 (1970), index; E. 
Stern, Embattled Justice (1971). add. bibliography: M.I. Urofsky 
and D.W. Levy (eds.), Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, 5 vols. (1971-78); 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



123 



BRANDEIS-BARDIN INSTITUTE 



idem, Half Brother, Half Son: The Letters of Louis D. Brandeis to Felix 
Frankfurter (1991); idem, Family Letters of Louis D. Brandeis (2002); 
G. Teitelbaum, Justice Louis D. Brandeis: A Bibliography of Writ- 
ings and Other Materials on the Justice (1988); M.I. Urofsky, Louis D. 
Brandeis (1981); idem, Louis D. Brandeis and the Progressive Tradi- 
tion (1981); N.L. Dawson, Louis D. Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter and 
the New Deal (1980). 

[Paul A. Freund] 

BRANDEIS-BARDIN INSTITUTE was founded in 1941 by 
Shlomo *Bardin (1898-1976) with the initial support of Justice 
Louis Brandeis, and settled on its 3,200-acre campus in Simi 
Valley of Southern California in 1947. It was not associated 
with any organization or movement, religious or secular, but 
rather was devoted to practicing traditional Judaism as related 
to the needs of modern living. 

The programs stressed instruction in Judaism for Ameri- 
can Jews and non-Jews alike. There were three principal pro- 
grams: Brandeis Camp Institute, a leadership training program 
for college youth; Alonim, a summer camp for children; and 
weekend sessions for adults through the House of the Book 
Association. The latter was centered on the observance of the 
Sabbath and a scholar-in-residence. Upon the death of Bar- 
din, Dennis Prager became the director of the Institute, and 
in 1977 the Brandeis Institute was renamed the Brandeis-Bar- 
din Institute. 

The institutes mission is primarily "to touch and teach 
Jews, to inspire them through their intellect and emotion, to 
enhance their connectedness to the Jewish people through the 
arts as well as academics, and to make a contribution to the 
advancement of Jewish culture as a means of Jewish identity." 
As an educational outreach resource, in addition to its Sab- 
bath retreats for all, the institute developed a special weekend 
program for newly married couples to learn more about in- 
corporating Judaism into their lives while meeting other new- 
lyweds and making new friends. Another innovation is the 
T'hila Jewish Summer Arts Institute. In this program, youth 
aged 14-18 study with accomplished Jewish artists as well as 
teachers of drama, dance, music, creative writing, and visual 
arts. In 1992 the institute created an Elderhostel program, of- 
fering seniors week-long educational activities and classes on 
Jewish themes. The Brandeis-Bardin Institute also provided 
the setting for media productions, from movies and tv shows 
to videos and student films. 

[Ruth BelorT (2 nd ed.)] 

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY, the only secular institution of 
higher learning in the Diaspora that is both Jewish-sponsored 
and non-sectarian. Brandeis University was founded in 1948 
and has continued to rank near the top of academic life in the 
United States. In 1985 Brandeis was elected to membership in 
the Association of American Universities, an elite organiza- 
tion of the nations 59 research universities. Controlling for 
size and judged according to faculty publications and citations, 
Brandeis was ranked ninth in 1997 among research universi- 



ties. Over 3,000 undergraduates were enrolled at the begin- 
ning of the 21 st century, plus another 1,300 graduate students. 
As of 2004, the campus consisted of 96 buildings, located on 
235 suburban acres nine miles west of Boston. Brandeis Uni- 
versity is especially renowned for its programs in the physical 
and natural sciences, in history, and in Jewish studies. 

Its founding president, Abram L. *Sachar, was a scholar 
of Jewish history; in 1968 he retired after two decades, and 
became chancellor and then chancellor emeritus. (He died 
in 1993, at the age of 94.) Sachars successor was an attorney, 
Morris B. Abram, who had served as president of the Ameri- 
can Jewish Committee. Amid considerable political turmoil on 
campus, he remained as president for only two years, and was 
briefly replaced by Charles Schottland, the former commis- 
sioner of the Social Security Administration and the founding 
dean of the Florence Heller Graduate School for Social Policy 
and Management (established at Brandeis in 1959). By 1972, 
when Schottland resigned in favor of Marver H. Bernstein, the 
Rosenstiel Basic Medical Research Center was completed, as 
was the Feldberg Computer Center. 

Bernstein, a specialist on the politics of Israel and the for- 
mer dean of Princeton University s Woodrow Wilson School 
of Public Affairs, served until 1983. His tenure at Brandeis 
was marked in particular by deepening financial problems, 
stemming from a loss of donor support due to Israel s im- 
mediate needs in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, and 
from a stagnant if not declining national economy. Co-edu- 
cational from the outset, Brandeis also lost a competitive ad- 
vantage when neighboring Ivy League institutions accepted 
female matriculates. Bernstein's successor was a Hungarian- 
born biologist, Evelyn Handler, the president of the University 
of New Hampshire. Serving at Brandeis until 1991, Handler 
confronted an ongoing problem of how to define the Jewish 
auspices of the institution. It had been formed in no small 
measure to counteract the academic antisemitism that had 
especially characterized Ivy League institutions, which had 
discriminated against Jewish students seeking admission and 
Jewish scholars seeking employment. Brandeis promised to 
be a haven against the discrimination inherent in the quota 
system. But after such antisemitism had vanished, the Jew- 
ish character of Brandeis University looked increasingly am- 
biguous. In an effort to expand its constituency, a more var- 
iegated campus cuisine - that would include unkosher foods 
like pork and shellfish - was to be introduced, intensifying 
controversy over the Jewish heritage of the university that 
bedeviled its presidency. 

In 1991 Samuel O. Thier, a physician who had headed the 
Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, be- 
came president; he served for three years. In 1992 the Good- 
man Center for the Study of Zionism was established; and two 
years later, the Volen National Center for Complex Systems, 
with particular focus upon the neurosciences, was dedicated. 
The International Business School was also created in 1994. 
Thier s successor was his provost, Jehuda *Reinharz. The first 
Brandeis alumnus (Ph.D. 1972) to serve as president (and the 



124 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRANDENBURG 



first to have been born in Israel), he had taught Jewish his- 
tory in the Lown School of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. 
President Reinharz served longer than any predecessor other 
than Sachar. He supervised the establishment of an Interna- 
tional Center for Justice, Ethics and Public Life, which en- 
hanced the historic reputation of the university for promot- 
ing undergraduate interest in social activism and progressive 
causes. Among the activists and scholars who joined the fac- 
ulty during Reinharz s presidency were former Soviet refuse- 
nik and Israeli politician Natan ^Sharansky, former Texas gov- 
ernor Ann Richards, and the former Secretary of Labor under 
President Bill Clinton, Robert B. * Reich. 

In 1948 the Brandeis library was a converted stable, hous- 
ing a few dozen volumes (including multiple copies of Gone 
with the Wind). By 1997 a million books had been shelved at 
the Goldfarb-Farber Library. (The millionth copy was a rare 
first edition of The Law of God, Isaac Leeser's 1845 Hebrew- 
English edition of the Pentateuch.) The chief source of fund- 
ing for the libraries has been the Brandeis University National 
Women's Committee. With about 50,000 members organized 
in over a hundred chapters, it is the largest voluntary orga- 
nization of supporters of any academic library in the United 
States. Jewish women themselves became objects of research 
in 1997, when the worlds only university-based institute for 
the study of Jewish women, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, 
was created; its founder and co-director has been sociologist 
Shulamit Reinharz (Ph.D. 1977). 

At the dawn of the 21 st century, the university's endow- 
ment was about $400 million; and over 300 full-time profes- 
sors and instructors served on the faculty, providing an official 
student-faculty ratio of 9:1. The teaching staff belonged to 24 
autonomous departments and 22 interdisciplinary programs, 
offering three dozen majors. Degrees in nearly two dozen dis- 
ciplines were also offered in the graduate programs. Probably 
the most famous faculty member was Morris Schwartz, the 
subject of a memoir by his former student, Mitch Albom, 1979, 
entitled Tuesdays with Morrie (1997), which ranked first on 
the New York Times hardcover best-seller list for four straight 
years. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships (or "genius" grants) 
were bestowed on three faculty members: Bernadette Broo- 
ten of the Lown School of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, a 
specialist in the social history of early Christianity; historian 
Jacqueline Jones, whose expertise combines the history of 
American women, labor, and African- Americans; and biolo- 
gist Gina Turrigiano, who works on activity-dependent regu- 
lation of neuronal properties. Washington's Crossing (2004), 
by David Hackett Fischer of the Department of History, was 
also a finalist for the National Book Award. The faculty in the 
early decades of the university had been heavily stocked with 
Jewish refugees, some of whom had academically unconven- 
tional careers or even limited formal education. The origins 
of the faculty in later decades were far more likely to resem- 
ble the pattern of other elite institutions. The shift to native- 
born scholars was evident in Jewish studies. Brandeis was the 
first secular university in North America to create such a de- 



partment; and its faculty has been especially distinguished, 
including Bible scholars Nahum *Sarna and Michael ^Fish- 
bane, sociologist Marshall *Sklare, historians Ben *Halpern 
and Jonathan D. *Sarna, and such scholars of Judaic thought 
as Nahum *Glatzer, Alexander *Altmann, Marvin *Fox, and 
Arthur *Green. 

Because the university is neither a religious seminary 
nor a sectarian institution, the Jewishness of its origins and 
character has instigated a considerable effort to negotiate and 
define; and press accounts timed to honor both the 40 th and 
50 th anniversaries of the founding of the institution referred 
to an "identity crisis" from which Brandeis University was re- 
portedly suffering. That dilemma has persisted. Beginning in 
the 1970s and gathering momentum in succeeding decades, 
Brandeis has been sensitive to the celebration of diversity as a 
desideratum in public life and especially on the nation's cam- 
puses. About 16% of the student body is classified as "minor- 
ity"; 101 foreign countries are also represented among the un- 
dergraduates and graduate students. The effort to ensure that 
both the student body and the personnel of the faculty and 
administration would reflect the ethos of multiculturalism 
was bound to generate some friction with a yearning to keep 
intact the heritage of Jewish distinctiveness, with the continu- 
ing effort of both undergraduates and institutional leaders to 
articulate the meaning of the Jewish legacy of Brandeis Uni- 
versity, and with imperatives of its Jewish communal spon- 
sorship and auspices. 

bibliography: M.B. Abram, The Day is Short: An Autobiog- 
raphy (1982); R.M. Freeland, Academia's Golden Age: Universities in 
Massachusetts, 1945-19/0. (1992); S. Pasternack (ed.)> From the Begin- 
ning: A Picture History of the First Four Decades of Brandeis University 
(1988); A.L. Sachar, A Host at Last (1976). 

[Stephen J. Whitfield (2 nd ed.)] 

BRANDENBURG, German province. The earliest Jewish 
community in the mark of Brandenburg was established in 
Stendal before 1267. In 1297, it received a liberal grant of priv- 
ileges which served as the model for the other communities 
there. Most of the communities (^Berlin, Pritzwalk, Salzwe- 
del, Spandau, ^Frankfurt on the Oder) maintained synagogues 
but few had rabbis. A liberal charter, granted to the Jews in 
Neumark in 1344, was later extended to the Jews of the mark 
of Brandenburg (1420, 1440). The Jews were not restricted 
to a specific quarter in the cities of the mark and were often 
granted rights of citizenship. Many of the communities were 
annihilated during the *Black Death (1349-50). The Jews were 
expelled from the area in 1446, but permitted to return a year 
later. Exorbitant taxes were levied in 1473 which only 40 Jews 
were able to pay. In 1510 a charge of desecrating the *Host de- 
veloped into a mass trial in which 38 Jews were burned at the 
stake and the remaining 400 to 500 Jews expelled. Elector 
Joachim 11 (1535-71) permitted Jews to trade in Brandenburg 
(1539) and to settle there (1543) after discovering that the ac- 
cusations were groundless. The favor he showed toward his 
*Court Jews Michel * Jud and *Lippold was greatly resented. 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



m 



BRANDES, CARL EDVARD 



On Joachims death anti-Jewish riots broke out and the Jews 
were again driven out. Jews expelled from ^Vienna in 1670 
were permitted to settle in Brandenburg, then part of Prus- 
sia. The Jewish population in the province of Brandenburg, 
excluding Berlin, numbered 2,967 in 1816; 12,835 m 1861 (an 
increase mainly due to emigration from Poland); and 8,442 
in 1925. After World War 11, few Jews lived in the area. In the 
Land Brandenburg there were 162 Jews in 1989 and 1,028 in 
2003, mostly in Potsdam. 

The City of Brandenburg 

Jews are mentioned in the city at the end of the 13 th century. 
In 1322 they owned a synagogue and several private houses. 
Despite the sufferings caused by the Black Death, their num- 
bers increased during the second half of the 14 th century; the 
privilege accorded to them by Elector Frederick 11 in 1444 
mentions their "weakness and poverty >> In 1490 mention is 
made of a Jewish street and in 1490-97 of a Jewish cemetery 
("kiffer" a corruption of the Hebrew kever). The Host dese- 
cration libel in 1510 led to the execution of Solomon b. Jacob 
and other Jews of Brandenburg (see above). In 1710 five Jewish 
families with residential rights were living in the city. A com- 
munity was organized in 1729. It acquired a prayer hall and 
two cemeteries (1720, 1747). The Jewish population numbered 
21 families in 1801 (104 persons; out of the total population of 
10,280); 18 families in 1813; 130 persons in 1840; 209 in 1880; 
and 469 in 1925. It had declined to 253 by 1939 and came to 
an end during World War 11. The Jewish community was not 
reestablished after the war. 

bibliography: Germ Jud, 2 (1968), 105-6; A. Ackermann, 
Geschichte der Juden in Brandenburg an der Havel (1906); Handbuch 
der juedischen Gemeindeverwaltung (1926-27), 10; H. Heise, Die Juden 
in der Mark Brandenburg bis zum Jahre 15/1 (1932). add. bibliog- 
raphy: I. Diekmann (ed.), Wegweiser durch das juedische Bran- 
denburg (1995); E. Herzfeld, Juden in Brandenburg-Preussen (2001); 
E. Weiss, Die nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in der Provinz 
Brandenburg (2003). 

BRANDES (Cohen), CARL EDVARD (1847-1931), Danish 
author, playwright, and politician; younger brother of Georg 
*Brandes, Brandes specialized in Oriental languages at the 
University of Copenhagen and received his doctorate in 1879. 
He published translations from Sanskrit and also Danish ver- 
sions of Isaiah (1902), Psalms (1905), Job, and Ecclesiastes 
(1907). However, he openly professed atheism and had no con- 
nection with Jewish affairs. Brandes entered politics as a mem- 
ber of the Radical Party. After the split in the party in 1884, 
he founded a new opposition paper Politiken which attained 
great political and cultural influence. From 1889 until 1894 
and from 1906 until 1927 he sat in the Chamber of Deputies. 
Brandes served as finance minister during 1909-10 and from 
1913 to 1920. His diplomatic skill as a negotiator gained him 
considerable renown, and he acquired further distinction as 
the administrator of neutral Denmark's finances during World 
War 1. Brandes was also deeply interested in the theater and 
even tried to become an actor. He wrote on modern Danish 



and foreign drama, and in his plays fought against conven- 
tional morality and hypocrisy in human society. 

bibliography: Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, 3 (1934), 614-28; 
Dansk Skonlitterrt Forfatterleksikon 1900-1950, 1 (1959), 153-5. 

[Frederik Julius Billeskov-Jansen] 

BRANDES, GEORG (Morris Cohen; 1842-1927), Danish 
literary critic and writer. Brandes was born into an assimi- 
lated family which had retained some nominal ties with the 
Copenhagen Jewish community. As a student of philosophy, 
he was at one stage strongly attracted to Soren Kierkegaard's 
Christianity. Turning more and more to literature, Brandes 
abandoned the idealist philosophy of his time, mainly dur- 
ing a stay in Paris (1866-67), where he was especially influ- 
enced by Taine. In 1870 he received his doctorate for a thesis 
on Taine's aesthetics and at about this time he also became 
Denmark's leading advocate of the new positivism. A series 
of public lectures which Brandes delivered in 1871 appeared as 
Hovedstromninger i det l^de Aarhundredes Litteratur (6 vols., 
1872-90; Main Currents in 19 th Century Literature, 1901-05) 
and was notable for its new and unorthodox approach. In 
this work he formulated his opposition to romanticism, and 
demanded that literature should stimulate the discussion of 
modern problems. Nevertheless, Brandes' essays on the Scan- 
dinavian romantics are among his best works. 

Meanwhile, the new naturalist school had gained support 
and the critic found gifted disciples in Ibsen and Strindberg, 
among others. However, he encountered strong opposition 
from conservative and church circles and as a result was de- 
nied the chair of aesthetics at the University of Copenhagen. 
(Years later, in 1902, the title of professor was eventually con- 
ferred on him, but without the obligation to lecture.) Bitterly 
disappointed, Brandes left Denmark and from 1877 until 1882 
lived in Berlin. There he became active in the field of German 
literature, embarking on a new, and ultimately decisive, trend: 
concentration on personalities rather than on literary currents. 
Brandes' essays on John Stuart Mill, Renan, Flaubert, and 
the two great Norwegian writers, Bjornson and Ibsen, testify 
to this change, as do his monographs on Lassalle (1877) and 
Disraeli (1878). In 1883 Brandes returned to Denmark, where 
friends helped him to secure a livelihood. His new lectures 
and essays appeared in a selected English edition as Eminent 
Authors of the 19 th Century (1886). In 1886 and 1887 travels in 
Eastern Europe provided him with material for two books, 
Indtryk fra Rusland (1888; Impressions of Russia, 1889) and 
Indtryk fra Polen (1888; Poland, A Study of the Land, People 
and Literature, 1903). 

In the 1880s Brandes read the still unknown Friedrich 
Nietzsche and found a message for himself. His Danish ar- 
ticle on the German philosopher (1888) was published in 
Germany (Aristokratischer Idealismus, 1890) and marked the 
starting point of Nietzsche's world fame. Thereafter Brandes 
indulged in a kind of hero worship. His books on great fig- 
ures include Shakespeare (1895-96; seven English editions 
appeared from 1898 to 1924); Goethe (1915; Eng. tr. 1924-36); 



126 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRANDSTAETTER, ROMAN 



Voltaire (1916-17; Eng. tr. 1930); Julius Caesar (1918); and Mi- 
chelangelo (1921). When Eminent Authors appeared in a new 
English edition in 1923 as Creative Spirits of the 19 th Century , 
it was characteristically enlarged with essays on Swinburne, 
Garibaldi, and Napoleon. In one of his last works, Sagnet om 
Jesus (1925; Jesus, a Myth, 192J), Brandes sought to refute the 
historical basis of Christianity and launched another attack on 
early Christianity in Urkristendom (1927). His collected works 
appeared in Danish (1899-1910) and in German (Gesammelte 
Schriften, 1902-1907). 

Georg Brandes was one of Denmark's greatest writers 
and his enormous influence on Danish culture and on Euro- 
pean literature is still apparent. He was also one of the out- 
standing representatives of the greatness and tragedy of the 
assimilated European Jew. It is significant that the Jewish fig- 
ures whom he tried to understand and describe were *Heine, 
*Boerne, *Disraeli, and *Lassalle. Although Brandes created 
a new type of literary critic and was familiar with all of the 
different national literary and political manifestations in Eu- 
rope, he himself was never really at home anywhere and his 
relationship with Denmark was ambivalent. He was never re- 
ally accepted by the Danes and his ideas still provoke either 
enthusiasm or disgust. Brandes denounced the progroms in 
Eastern Europe, but repudiated his own Jewishness and dis- 
liked "Jewish" characteristics in others. He defended Dreyfus, 
but did not take Herzls Jewish State or the Zionist movement 
very seriously, much to Herzls dismay. After the Balfour Dec- 
laration, Brandes recognized the reality of Zionism. He ex- 
pressed this change of view in an article entitled "Das neue 
Judentum" (1918), which later appeared in a biographical study 
by Henri Nathansen. Here, an intimate friend described the 
critic s struggle with his Jewish identity. 

bibliography: H. Nathansen, Jude oder Europaeer: Portraet 
von Georg Brandes (1931); J. Moritzen, Georg Brandes in Life and Let- 
ters (1922); P. von Rubow, Liter re Studier (1928); idem. Georg Brandes' 
Briller (1932); Correspondance de Georg Brandes, 5 vols. (1952-66); H. 
Fenger, George Brandes et la France (1963), contains bibliography and 
list of works, including posthumous editions of his correspondence; 
A. Bein and G. Herlitz (eds.), Iggerot Herzl, 1 (1948), contains Herzls 
letters to Brandes. 

[Frederik Julius Billeskov-Jansen / Leni Yahil] 

BRANDES, LUDWIG ISRAEL (1821-1894), philanthropist 
and chief physician of the General Hospital in Copenhagen. 
Brandes was one of the first Danish doctors to understand 
and practice physiotherapy, and he wrote a treatise on this 
subject. He established the first Danish day nursery and a so- 
ciety for children's care. In 1859 he founded a private old-age 
home called Kobenhavns Sygehjem, which still exists, and 
initiated several new social projects for the benefit of Dan- 
ish communal life. His autobiography Mine Arbejders Histo- 
ric ("The Story of My Works," 1891) gives evidence of a great 
scholar and humanist. 

bibliography: Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, 3 (1934), 643-4. 

[Julius Margolinsky] 



BRANDON, OHEB (Oeb) ISAAC (1830-1902), Dutch haz- 
zan. Brandon was one of the best-known Sephardi hazzanim 
of Amsterdam, serving the congregation from 1861 to 1902. 
He wrote a guide for hazzanim which was probably partly a 
translation of the Hebrew guide, Seder Hazzanut, preserved 
in the community's archives. Brandons work gave minutely 
detailed information about the melodies used on various oc- 
casions. It also dealt with local traditions such as the alloca- 
tion of functions during services and included a chapter on 
the Portuguese phrases used for announcements in the syna- 
gogue. Brandon had considerable influence on his successors, 
especially Jacob *Blanes. 

BRANDSTAEDTER, MORDECAI DAVID (1844-1928), 
Galician Hebrew writer. A successful manufacturer, he became 
a leading figure in the Tarnow Jewish community, and was ap- 
pointed lay judge in the district court. His first short stories, 
u Eliyahu ha-Navi" ("The Prophet Elijah") and u Mordekhai 
Kizoviz" appeared in Ha-Shahar (1869), which published most 
of his subsequent work. Brandstaedter ridiculed the Hasidim 
and their Zaddikim. He also exposed the foolishness of the 
so-called "enlightened" Galician Jews, and their shallow ma- 
terialism. He did not employ the biting satire or the rational- 
istic didactic moralizing of most of his contemporaries in the 
Haskalah movement. He gently mocked his characters* petty 
and ridiculous activities, without hate or anger. His work bore 
traces of romanticism; he invented intricate and wonderful 
plots and idealized characters and situations. Although he did 
not delve into economic or social problems, he had a grasp of 
prevailing conditions in the Pale and opposed defects in mar- 
riage customs, family life, education, and communal affairs. 
He derided Jewish petty mercantilism and advocated that Jews 
engage in craftsmanship and agriculture. In later life, Brands- 
taedter joined the Hibbat Zion movement, and his stories "Ke- 
far Mezaggegim" ("The Glaziers' Village"), and "Zalman Goi" 
("Zalman the Gentile") extolled Zionism and life in Erez Israel. 
In his work, the dialogue tended to take dramatic form, but 
occurred naturally within the plot, and avoided lengthy phi- 
losophizing and blatant propaganda. Brandstaedter shunned 
elaborate phrases, and preferred a more concise style. His de- 
scriptions were realistic. During World War 1 Brandstaedter 
was forced to flee to Vienna. He returned to Tarnow in 1918, 
and wrote a series of aphorisms, entitled "Keisamim" for the 
New York Hebrew magazine Hadoar (1924-29). His autobi- 
ography u Mi-Toledot Hayyai" also appeared in Hadoar (1926, 
nos. 12-20). A three-volume edition of his collected works was 
published in Warsaw (1910-13). 

bibliography: Lachower, Sifrut, 2 (1929), 237-8, 315; Klaus- 
ner, Sifrut, 5 (i955 2 )> 232-42. 

[Mordechai Rabinson ] 

BRANDSTAETTER, ROMAN (1906-1987), Polish poet and 
playwright. A grandson of the Hebrew writer Mordecai David 
^Brandstaedter, he was born in Tarnow. His early verse, col- 
lected in Jarzma (1928), Droga pod gore (1931), and Wezty i 



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BRANDT, BORIS 



miecze (1933), was on general themes. During the 1930s he ed- 
ited Zionist periodicals and began writing poems extolling the 
return to Zion and the rebuilding of the Jewish national home. 
Two of his collections at this period were entitled Krolestwo 
trzeciej swiqtyni ("The Kingdom of the Third Temple," 1934 
and Jerozolima swiatla i mroku ("Jerusalem of Light and Twi- 
light," 1935). For the first 40 years of his life Bran dstaetter was 
a devoted Jew. In 1936 he published a brilliant attack on anti- 
semitism in Zmowa eunuchow ("The Conspiracy of the Eu- 
nuchs," 1936), and his studies of Jewish interest included one 
on *Mickiewicz, Legion zydowski Adama Mickiewicza ("The 
Jewish Legion of Adam Mickiewicz," 1932) and another on the 
writer Julian *Klaczko, Tr age dia Juliana Klaczki (1933). When 
he escaped to Palestine in 1940 he was warmly received by the 
Hebrew writers and his play about antisemitism in pre-war 
Poland was staged. After World War 11 Brandstaetter moved 
to Rome and swiftly abandoned all ties with the Jewish people, 
marrying the relative of a Polish cardinal, and converting to 
Catholicism. In 1948 he returned to Poland, where he joined 
the Catholic group of writers. His later works include dramas 
inspired by Polish history, such as Powrot syna marnotrawnego 
("The Return of the Prodigal Son," 1948; 19562); a play about 
*Rembrandt; and the first part of a novel about Jesus, Jezus 
z Nazaretu: Czas milczenia ("Jesus of Nazareth: The Time of 
Silence," 1967; 1982). 

bibliography: E. Korzeniewska (ed.), Shownik wspohtcze- 
snych pisarzy polskich, 1 (1963), 260-3 (incl. bibl.). 

[Moshe Altbauer] 

BRANDT, BORIS (Baruch; 1860-1907), Russian Zionist, 
writer, and economist. Brandt, who was born in Makhnovka 
(now Komsomolskoye) near Berdichev, Ukraine, was edu- 
cated in a heder. Though he learned Russian only as an adult, 
he graduated with honors from the law faculty of Kiev Uni- 
versity. He wrote many books and articles on economics and 
taxation and in 1897 was appointed a senior official and later 
member of the research committee of the Russian ministry 
of finance. He was an adviser to the minister Count Sergei 
Witte. Brandt was one of the few Jewish senior officials in 
the czarist government administration. A convinced and ac- 
tive Zionist, he was forced, as a civil servant, to conceal this 
activity. He regarded himself as a disciple of Perez *Smolen- 
skin, about whom he wrote a long article. He was a member 
of the *Benei Moshe, and participated incognito at the First 
Zionist Congress in 1897 as the delegate of the St. Petersburg 
Hovevei Zion. Brandt regarded emigration as a way of solv- 
ing the Jewish problem in Russia and persuaded the Jewish 
Colonization Association to renew its aid to Jewish emigrants. 
Toward the end of his life, he collected material for a compre- 
hensive study of the economic development and settlement 
in Erez Israel. He wrote (in Russian, Yiddish, German, and 
Hebrew) books on foreign capital in Russia, the fight against 
alcoholism, contemporary woman in Western Europe and 
Russia, and articles on Zionism and Jewish history for Russ- 
kiy yevrey Raz$vet y etc. 



bibliography: A.L. Jaffe (ed.)> Sefer ha-Congress (195c 2 ), 
366; N. Sokolow, in: Die Welt, 20 (1907), 17. 

[Yehuda Slutsky] 

°BRANDT, WILLY (1913-1992), German Social Democratic 
politician and chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany 
(frg) from 1969 to 1974. He was born Herbert Frahm and im- 
migrated to Norway after Hitler s rise to power, where he ad- 
opted the pseudonym Brandt. After the war, Brandt returned 
to Germany and started his political career, first as mayor of 
West Berlin, then as chancellor. His administration marked 
the beginning of a new era in German history. In domestic 
as in foreign affairs reforms were initiated. In 1971 he was 
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. From 1977 until his death he 
was head of the Socialist International. Brandt published sev- 
eral volumes of memoirs (e.g., Links undfrei> 1981; Erinnerun- 
gen y 1989). In 2002 an edition of his collected writings in 10 
volumes began to appear. 

As early as 1933, Brandt was aware of the propaganda 
value of antisemitism for the ns regime. After the November 
pogrom of 1938 (the so-called Reichskristallnacht) he pub- 
lished a remarkable report of the event in a Norwegian daily. 
One of his close friends, Stefan Szende (1901-1985), a Hungar- 
ian Jew, told him about the murder of Hungarian Jews. But 
only during the ^Nuremberg Trials did he understand the 
extent of this "biggest crime against humanity" (Brandt, 
Forbrytere og andre tyskere, 1946, 78) and its importance. 
Particularly emblematic of this insight was the gesture with 
which Brandts name remains connected: his kneeling in 
Warsaw in 1970 in front of the ghetto memorial. The photo- 
graphic documentation of that moment has become one of the 
icons of 20 th century history. In June 1973 Brandt was the first 
German chancellor to visit Israel. Out of deep concern for 
its existence he was willing to act personally on its behalf 
(as in the Yom Kippur War); his attempts to mediate in the 
Middle East conflict in general, however, were without ma- 
jor success. 

bibliography: B. Marshall, Willy Brandt (1990); P. Merse- 
burger, Willy Brandt (2002) (Ger.). 

[Marcus Pyka (2 nd ed.)] 

BRANDWEIN, YEHUDA ZEVI (1903-1969), kabbalis- 
tic author. A descendant of the hasidic dynasty of the rabbi 
of Stretyn, he was born in Safed and studied in yeshivot in 
Jerusalem where he was ordained by such great authorities 
as A.I. *Kook and H. *Sonnenfeld. Despite the fact that he 
was an hasidic rabbi, he did not want to earn his bread by 
serving as a rabbi, but preferred manual labor and worked as 
a builder. At night he would study and meditate on mystical 
writings. Brandwein was brother-in-law, disciple, and friend 
of R. Yehudah *Ashlag, who taught him Kabbalah. After Ash- 
lags death, Brandwein completed Ashlags commentary on 
the *Zohar, calling it Maalot ha-Sullam (1958). He also wrote 
a commentary on Tikkunei ha-Zohar (i960); he published the 
complete works of Isaac *Luria (1961-64) in 14 volumes, with 



128 



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BRANT, HENRY DREYFUSS 



punctuation, glosses, and references; and republished Moses 
*Cordovero s Or Ne'er av (1965). From 1957, he served as chair- 
man of the Department for the Provision of Religious Require- 
ments in the Histadrut, and was called by many, "the rabbi of 
the Histadrut." After the Six-Day War, Brandwein settled in 
the Old City of Jerusalem (1968). 

BR ANDYS, KAZIMIERZ (1916-2000), Polish author. Born 
in Lodz, Brandys studied at Warsaw University and managed 
to survive the Nazi occupation. After the war he became a 
leading figure in Polish intellectual life. He helped to found 
the Lodz weekly Kuznica and was a member of the editorial 
board of the Warsaw weekly Nowa Kultura. Brandys' works, 
mainly novels, include Miasto niepokonane ("Invincible City," 
1946), a book about Warsaw; Sprawiedliwi ludzie ("Just Peo- 
ple," 1953), a play about the Polish revolt of 1905; Obywatele 
("Citizens," 1954); Obrona Grenady ("The Defense of Granada," 
!955)> an d various short stories. His novel cycle, Miedzy woj- 
nami ("Between the Wars"), comprises Samson (1948), Anty- 
gona (1948), Troja, miasto otwarte ("Troy, Open City," 1949), 
and Czhowiek nie umiera ("Man Does Not Die," 1951). The 
first part, Samson, tells the story of a hunted Jew whose tragic 
existence is alleviated only when he joins the partisans. After 
1955 Brandys tried to assess the effects of the Stalinist era on 
Poland and to apportion the moral responsibility for his coun- 
try's social and political situation. An accent of irony marks 
the volumes of Listy dopani Z.: Wspomnienia z terazniejszosci 
("Letters to Mrs. Z.: Memoirs of the Present," i st ser. 1957-58, 
2 nd ser. 1959-60; 19682), which contain Brandys reflections 
on contemporary issues and attack outdated social, political, 
and artistic concepts. 

His brother, Marian Brandys (1912-1998), wrote travel 
books and stories on historical themes. 

[Stanislaw Wygodzki] 

BRANDYS NAD LABEM (Ger. Brandeis an der Elbe), 

town in Bohemia (Czech Republic). The first Jewish settle- 
ment in the beginning of the 16 th century was located in the 
suburb of Hradek. After the general expulsion from Bohemia 
in 1559, the Jews from Brandys went to *Poznan. However, the 
Brandys municipality undertook to safeguard Jewish prop- 
erty there for an annual payment of 20 groschen. In 1568 the 
Jews were permitted to return and to reclaim their property. 
Nine houses in Jewish ownership are recorded in 1630. Sub- 
sequently, a considerable number of the Jews expelled from 
Prague in 1745 found refuge in Brandys. There was a small 
Jewish ghetto in the town in the 17 th to 19 th centuries. Filip 
*Bondy officiated as rabbi from 1856 to 1876. Brandys was one 
of the first communities in Bohemia to introduce liturgical 
reforms in its synagogue. The Jewish population numbered 
380 in 1893; 272 in 1921 (6% of the total), 13 of declared Jew- 
ish nationality; and 139 in 1930. The community ceased to ex- 
ist during the Holocaust and was not revived thereafter. The 
well-known Jewish surname Brandeis was probably derived 
from the name of the town. 



bibliography: Mandl,in: H. Gold (ed.),Juden und Judenge- 
meinden Boehmens, 1 (1934), 56-58. add. bibliography: J. Fiedler, 
Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia, (1991), 65. 

[Oskar K. Rabinowicz] 

BRANN, MARCUS (1849-1920), historian. Brann was born 
in Rawicz, Poland, where his father was rabbi. He studied 
under Z. *Frankel and H. *Graetz at the Jewish Theological 
Seminary and at the University of Breslau. From 1875 to 1883 
he served as assistant rabbi in Breslau and from 1883 to 1885 
as director of the Berlin Jewish orphanage. He was rabbi in 
Pless from 1885 to 1891, when he received a call to the Breslau 
Seminary as Graetzs successor, receiving the title of profes- 
sor in 1914. 

Branns early studies dealt with the house of Herod (in his 
doctorate thesis, which was published in Latin in 1873), and 
Megillat Taanit (mgwj, 25, (1876)). Later he turned to German- 
Jewish history. He was the first among German- Jewish histo- 
rians systematically to use Jewish and general archives. Brann 
made a thorough study of the history of the Jews of Silesia 
and published in particular Geschichte der Juden in Schlesien 
(6 vols., 1896-1917). He became widely known through some 
more popular works such as Geschichte der Juden und ihrerLit- 
eratur (2 vols., 1893-95; 1910-13 3 ) and a textbook on the history 
and literature of the Jewish people, Lehrbuch der juedischen Ge- 
schichte (4 vols., 1900-03). The historian Dubnow made great 
use of Branns work in the first editions of his History of the 
Jews. In addition to the above, Brann (with others) published 
and annotated the posthumous editions of Graetzs Geschichte 
der Juden (1890-1909). In his popular works Brann followed 
the general pattern established by Graetz; in his independent 
scientific publications he was a faithful disciple of his mentor 
in his analysis of the sources and systematic presentation. In 
1893 Brann revived the publication of Monatsschrift fuer Ge- 
schichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (mgwj), which had 
been discontinued in 1887. Until 1899 he was coeditor with 
David *Kaufmann, continuing alone after the latter s death. 
Brann also edited: D. Kaufmanns Gesammelte Schriften (3 vols., 
1908-15); Gedenkbuch zur Erinnerung an David Kaufmann 
(with F. Rosenthal, 1900); Festschrift zu Israel Lewys siebzigstem 
Geburtstag (with I. Elbogen, 1911); and Festschriften in memory 
of the 100 th anniversary of Zacharias Frankels and Heinrich 
Graetzs birth (in 1901 and 1917). Brann was also editor of part 
1 (A through L) of volume 1 of the G er mania Judaica (with A. 
Freimann, 1917). He also wrote Geschichte des juedisch-the- 
ologischen Seminars in Breslau (1904); Branns bibliography 
was partly reproduced in G. Kisch (ed.), Das Breslauer Semi- 
nar 1854-1938 (1963), 394-5. In addition to his literary activity, 
Brann was active in various Jewish organizations. 

bibliography: W. Cohn, in: Schlesische Lebensbilder, 4 
(1931), 410-6. add. bibliography: R. Heuer (ed.), Lexikon 
deutsch-juedischer Autoren, 3 (1995), 403-9, bibl. 

BRANT, HENRY DREYFUSS (1913- ), composer, flautist, 
pianist, and conductor. Born in Montreal, the son of a violinist, 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



129 



BRASCH, RUDOLPH 



Brant began experimenting in composing at the age of eight. 
From 1926 to 1934 he studied in Montreal, New York, and the 
Juilliard Graduate School. In New York, he worked as a com- 
poser, conductor, and arranger for radio, film, jazz groups, and 
ballets, later extending his commercial music to Hollywood 
and Europe. Brant taught composition and orchestration in 
several institutions. Among his honors are Guggenheim Fel- 
lowships (1947, 1956), Prix Italia (first American recipient, 
1955) and the Pulitzer Prize (2002). 

Brant was one of the first American composers to incor- 
porate elements of jazz and popular culture in concert music. 
His earlier works include a Saxophone Concerto, while Mu- 
sic for a Five and Dime (1932) for clarinet, piano, and kitchen 
hardware indicates his humor. Fascination with unusual in- 
strumentation/timbral combinations has been his distinc- 
tive trait. Angels and Devils (1931) is scored for solo flute with 
flute orchestra, his Consort for True Violins (1965) is written 
for eight instruments of the New Violin Family, which he 
helped to develop. 

In the early 1950s, inspired chiefly by Ives, Brant became 
a pioneer in the field of spatial music, in which the variously 
independent ensembles (instruments and vocal) were to be 
placed at specified point in space. 

He felt that spatial music would speak more expressively 
to the human predicament, and create audience participa- 
tion. Early work in the genre is Antiphony 1 (1953) for five 
widely separated orchestral groups, a work that predated the 
signal European spatial work, Stockhausens Gruppen. Later 
pieces also make use of theater (The Grand Universal Circus, 
1956), lighting (Concerto with Lights, 1961) and continuous 
movement of the performers (Windjamme, 1969). Because 
of the magnitude of their production and the logistic 
problems of placing ensembles outdoors or around an au- 
ditorium, large-scale works like Kingdom Come (1970) are 
rarely staged and recordings fail to reflect the nature of the 
music. 

In the 1980s Brant expanded his concept of stylistic di- 
versity to include the music of non- Western peoples. Meteor 
Farm (1982) is scored for Indonesian gamelan ensemble, jazz 
band, three South Indian soloists, and West African chorus 
with percussion as well as conventional European perform- 
ers. He also turned to improvisational scoring. Gaining rec- 
ognition in his later years, Brant received commissions for big 
works. He continued to eschew amplification and dreamed 
of developing larger, louder acoustic instruments and a new 
kind of concert hall with movable walls. Three Brant works 
were premiered in the year 2000, including Prophets for four 
cantors and a *shofar player at the Uilenberger Synagogue in 
Amsterdam. 

Brant composed over 100 spatial works, as well as sym- 
phonic, chamber, and choral works, ballets, and films scores. 
He made the scoring of Ives's Concord Sonata (1995) a proj- 
ect of 30 years. 

His writings include "Space as an Essential Aspect of Mu- 
sical Composition" (in Contemporary Composers on Contem- 



porary Music, ed. E. Schwartz and B. Childs, 1967) and "Spa- 
tial Music Progress Report" (in Quadrille, 1979). 

bibliography: ng2; mgg2; B. Morton and P. Collins (eds.), 
Contemporary Composers (1992), 114-116. 

[Naama Ramot (2 nd ed.)] 

BRASCH, RUDOLPH (1912-2004), Australian Reform rabbi. 
Brasch was born in Berlin to British parents, his father having 
been one of the early pioneers in South Africa. He studied at 
the universities of Berlin and Wuerzburg, where he received 
his doctorate, and, under Rabbi Leo *Baeck, at the Hochschule 
fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, where he re- 
ceived his rabbinical diploma. After having held ministerial 
positions in London, Dublin, and Springs, South Africa, in 
1949 he was appointed minister of Temple Emanuel, Sydney, 
and later ecclesiastical head of the Australasian Union for 
Progressive Judaism. 

Brasch was active in the field of public and interfaith re- 
lations, conducting a weekly television program and contrib- 
uting a regular weekly column on "Religion and Life" to the 
Sun-Herald, the leading Australian Sunday newspaper. 

A prolific author, Brasch has a large number of books 
to his credit, some of which have gone into a number of edi- 
tions and have been republished as paperbacks. They include 
The Star of David (1955) and a companion volume The Eter- 
nal Flame (1958); The Unknown Sanctuary (1969, American 
edition Judaic Heritage). His How Did It Begin (Customs and 
Superstitions and Their Romantic Origin, 1965) has gone 
into ten editions and has been translated into German and 
Japanese. He wrote the first biography of General Sir John 
*Monash, which was published by the Royal Australian His- 
torical Society (1969). 

He was awarded an O.B.E. in 1967. After his retirement 
from Temple Emanuel in 1979, he served for some years as a 
rabbi in Birmingham, Alabama. 

add. bibliography: Obituary, in: Australian Jewish News 
(Nov. 26, 2004); W.D. Rubinstein, Australia 11, index. 

BRASLAV (Pol. Braslaw), small town in Belarus; in Poland 
until 1795 and between 1921 and 1939. A small number of Jew- 
ish families lived there in the 16 th century and numbered 225 
in 1766. The community grew to 1,234 in 1897 (82% of the to- 
tal population), and 1,900 in 1926. There was a ^Karaite settle- 
ment in Braslav and its vicinity. Jews traded in flax and grain, 
exporting them to other parts of the country. In 1905 a po- 
grom was staged. During the Polish period most of the chil- 
dren studied in a Yiddish school. In September 1939 Braslav 
was annexed by the Soviet Union and all Jewish organizations 
and parties ceased their activities. 

[Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

Holocaust Period 

In 1941, on the eve of the Holocaust, there were 2,500 Jews in 
Braslav. The city was captured by the Germans on June 28, 
1941, and on the following day the German army and police 



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ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRATISLAVA 



removed all the city s Jews to the nearby swamp area, where 
they were held for two days. Meanwhile, all Jewish property 
had been stolen by the local population. On August 2, 1941, a 
"contribution* of 100,000 rubles was demanded of the Jews. 
At the beginning of April 1942, a ghetto was established, and, 
in addition to the local Jewish population, Jews from Du- 
binovo, Druya, Druysk, Miory, and Turmont were interned 
there. The population of the ghetto was divided into two parts: 
the workers and the "nonproductive." In the first Aktion - on 
June 3-5, 1942 - about 3,000 people were killed; local farmers 
actively helped the Germans in this Aktion. After some of the 
Jews went into hiding, the German commander announced 
that those Jews who came out of hiding of their own free will 
would not be harmed, but the handful who responded to this 
call were executed on June 7. In the autumn of 1942, the ghetto 
was turned into a work camp in which the remainder of the 
Jews from the entire area were concentrated. On March 19, 
1943, the Nazis began to liquidate the camp, but this time they 
met with opposition. A group of Jews, fortified in one of the 
buildings, offered armed resistance. Only after their ammuni- 
tion ran out did the Nazis succeed in suppressing the opposi- 
tion. The fighters fell at their posts. There were 40 survivors 
of the Braslav community, some of whom fought in partisan 
units in the area. After the war a monument was erected to 
the Jews killed there by the Nazis. In 1970 there were 18 Jew- 
ish families with no synagogue. 

[Aharon Weiss] 

bibliography: J.J. Kermisz, "Akcje" i Wysiedlenia, 2 (1946), 
index; Yad Vashem Archives. 

BRASLAVI (Braslavski), JOSEPH (1896-1972), Israeli ge- 
ographer and author. Braslavi went to Erez Israel from the 
Ukraine as a boy of ten. During World War 1 he was an in- 
terpreter in the Turkish army. In the early 1920s he taught 
Hebrew in various kibbutzim. In 1924 he was sent on an ex- 
ploratory journey to Transjordan and the Negev in connec- 
tion with the projected settlement of * Ha-Shomer, the Jewish 
watchmen's organization, in these areas. He went to Berlin to 
study Semitics in 1927. On his return he resumed his explora- 
tions and his lectures on the geography of the country. From 
1938 he taught at the Teachers' Seminary in Tel Aviv. Braslavi s 
most important work is his six-volume Ha-Yadata etha-Arez? 
("Do You Know the Land?" 1940-65), a detailed description 
of all the regions of Israel. Other books include: Milhamah 
ve-Hitgonenut shel Yehudei Erez Yisrael me-ahar Mered Bar- 
Kokhva ve-ad Massa ha-Zelav ha-Rishon (1943); Le-Heker 
Arzenu (1954); and Me-Rezuat Azzah ad Yam Suf(ig^6). 

bibliography: Tidhar,3 (195s 2 ), 1233-35. 

BRA§OV (Hung. Brasso; Ger. Kronstadt; between 1950 
and i960 Orasul Stalin), city in Southern Transylvania, cen- 
tral Romania; until 1918 in Hungary. From 1492 onward Jews 
are mentioned living there temporarily or passing through 
Bra§ov in transit. For a long time the city was inhabited by Ro- 
manians, Hungarians, and Germans (Saxons).The Jews took 



part in the trade between Hungary, Muntenia, and Turkey. 
In 1826 several Jewish families received permission to settle 
there permanently, and in 1828 they also received the right to 
organize their own community. In 1870 the Jewish commu- 
nity started a program for teaching Hebrew to its members, 
and for this purpose invited the Hebrew poet Solomon Ehren- 
kranz to serve as a teacher. The community numbered 103 in 
1865 and 1,198 in 1900. A secular Jewish school was established 
in i860. In 1868, the Bra§ov community became Liberal (see 
^Neology). A separate Orthodox community was established 
in 1877. The school continued to serve both communities. A 
significant part of the Jews of Brasov were assimilated (mostly 
to Hungarian and German culture, but some also tried also to 
assimilate to Romanian culture). Immediately after the end of 
World War 1 Zionist youth organizations made their appear- 
ance in Brasov and were active in promoting the ideology of 
reconstructing Israel. The Jewish population numbered 2,594 
in 1930. During World War 11, under the Fascist Antonescu 
regime, the communal buildings and much Jewish property 
were confiscated. Jewish men, including many from through- 
out the region, were drafted into local labor battalions and 
survived the war. The rehabilitated community was reorga- 
nized in 1949 in accordance with the law on the organization 
of Jewish communities in Romania. Instead of two communi- 
ties, a unified one was established with an Orthodox section. 
The Jewish population numbered 1,759 in the city of Bra§ov 
and 4,035 in the district in 1956, and 2,000 in the city in 1968. 
At the outset of the 21 st century only a few hundred Jews con- 
tinued to live in Brasov, mostly elderly, the rest having emi- 
grated to Israel or to the West. 

bibliography: Magyar Zsido Lexikon (1929), 137-8; L. Pap, 
in: Sinai, 3 (Bucharest, 1931), 133-7; 5 ( 1 933)> 7 2- 75; PK Romanyah, 
291-4. 

[Yehouda Marton / Paul Schveiger (2 nd ed.)] 

BRATISLAVA (Ger. Pressburg, Hg. Pozsony; former Slovak 
name Presporek), capital of ^Slovakia; until 1918 in Hungary; 
former chartered capital of the kings of Hungary. It was one of 
the most ancient and important Jewish centers in the Danube 
region. The first Jews possibly arrived with the Roman legions. 
The *Memorbuch of the community of Mainz commemorates 
the "martyrs of Pressburg" who perished in the First Crusade. 
The first documentary mention of Jews in Bratislava dates 
from 1251. In 1291 King Andrew in granted a charter to the 
community, which paid taxes to the royal treasury, and from 
1345 also to the municipality. Bratislava Jews mainly engaged 
in moneylending, but included merchants and artisans, vine- 
yard owners, and vintners. A synagogue is first mentioned in 
1335 and was rebuilt in 1339. 

In 1360 the Jews were expelled from Hungary, and some 
of the Jews of Bratislava took refuge in Hainburg (Austria). 
They returned in 1367 and resumed possession of their homes. 
In 1371 the municipality introduced the Judenbuch regulating 
financial dealings between Jews and Christians. Isaac *Tyrnau 
officiated as rabbi in Bratislava about 1410. In 1392 King Sigis- 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



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BRATISLAVA 



mund exempted Christians for a year from paying the interest 
on loans borrowed from Jews; in 1441 and 1450 all outstanding 
debts owed to Jews were canceled; and in 1475 Jews were for- 
bidden to accept real estate as security. An attempt by many 
Jews to leave Bratislava in 1506 was prevented by Ladislas 11 
who confiscated the property of those who had already left. 

The Jews were expelled from Bratislava in the general 
expulsion from Hungary in 1526, although they apparently 
continued to live in several places, including the Schloss- 
berg ("Castle Hill"), outside the municipal bounds. The first 
Jew subsequently to reside within them was Samuel * Oppen- 
heimer, who received permission to settle in a suburb in 1692. 
He was followed by other Jews and a synagogue was built in 
1695, where the first known rabbi to officiate was Yom Tov Lip- 
mann. In 1699 the *Court Jew Simon Michael, who had settled 
there in 1693, was appointed head of the community; he built 
a bet midrash and acquired land for a cemetery. By 1709 there 
were 189 Jews living in Bratislava and 772 by 1736. The Jewish 
quarter in the Schlossberg remained outside the municipal 
jurisdiction. It later passed to the jurisdiction of the counts 



RABBIS OF BRATISLAVA 




Palffy, who gave protection to the Jews living there. In 1714 
they granted a charter of privileges to the 50 families living in 
its precincts and in Zuckermandel. The Jews in the Schlossberg 
resided in a single row of houses, but in 1776 the municipality 
permitted Jews to settle on land owned by the city opposite 
these houses and thus to constitute a "Jewish street." The Jews 
living on the Palffy side, however, enjoyed different rights from 
those under municipal jurisdiction, the former, for instance, 
being permitted to engage in crafts and all branches of com- 
merce. They enjoyed freedom of religious worship. After the 
status of the community improved, the customary provision 
of geese to the Viennese court on St. Martins Day, formerly 
an onerous tax, developed into a ceremony (performed un- 
til 1917). The Jews in Bratislava pioneered the textile trade in 
Hungary in the 18 th century. Under the direction of Meir Hal- 
berstadt the yeshivah became an important center of Jewish 
learning, while the authority of Moses *Sofer (d. 1839) made 
Bratislava a center of Orthodoxy for all parts of the Jewish 
world. During the reign of Maria Theresa (1740-80) the rep- 
resentatives of Hungarian Jewry used to meet in Bratislava to 
arrange the tax administration. 

During the revolution of 1848, anti-Jewish riots broke 
out. The Jewish quarter was put under military protection 
and Jews living elsewhere had to retire within it. Jews volun- 
teered to serve in the National Guard but were opposed by the 
general public. Further outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence fol- 
lowed the *blood libel case in *Tisza-Eszlar in 1882 and 1883. 
From 1898 tension mounted between the Orthodox and the 
pro-Reform members of the community (see ^Reform; ^Hun- 
gary). After 1869 the Orthodox, Neolog, and status-quo -ante 
factions in Bratislava organized separate congregations. The 
Orthodox provincial office (Landeskanzlei) later became no- 
torious for its opposition to Zionism. The Neolog and status- 
quo-ante congregations united in 1928 as the Jeshurun Fed- 
eration. A large part of the Jewish quarter was ravaged by fire 
in 1913 but was later rebuilt. 

Jewish institutions in Bratislava included religious 
schools, charitable organizations, and a Jewish hospital 
(founded in 1710; a new building was constructed in 1931). The 
Hungarian Zionist Organization was founded in Bratislava in 
1902 and the World *Mizrachi Organization in 1904, both on 
the initiative of Samuel *Bettelheim. During the Hungarian 
Revolution of 1919 anti- Jewish excesses were prevented by a 
guard formed by Jewish veterans. With the establishment of 
Czechoslovakia, Bratislava became the center of a number of 
Jewish national communal institutions and of Jewish national 
as well as Zionist activities. Bratislava also became the center 
of *Agudat Israel in Czechoslovakia. During this period, sev- 
eral Jewish newspapers and a Hebrew weekly, Ha-Yehudi, were 
published there. In 1930 the Jewish population in Bratislava 
numbered 14,882 (12% of the total population), 5,597 of de- 
clared Jewish nationality. 

In the titularly independent state of Slovakia set up un- 
der Nazi auspices in 1939, Bratislava was the seat of the Jew- 
ish central office (Ustredna zidov). Even before the declara- 



132 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRATISLAVA 



tion of the independent state, attacks on the synagogues and 
yeshivah on Nov. 11, 1938, inaugurated the regime of antise- 
mitic terror. Nearly a thousand Jewish students were expelled 
from the university. Subsequently, anti-Jewish terrorization, 
restrictive measures, and pogroms increased. On the outbreak 
of World War 11 in September 1939 all Jewish shops were con- 
fiscated, and in August 1940 the Jews were forced to surrender 
their homes. Many transports of the "illegal" immigration to 
Palestine were organized in Bratislava. Numbers of Jews who 
had fled from Nazi persecution in Vienna in 1938 were put 
into camps in the Patronka and Petrzalka suburbs. In Oc- 
tober 1941, 6,473 Jews were expelled to 16 provincial towns, 
mostly to Trnava, Nitra, and Nove Mesto. Deportations and 
flight continued until the arrival of the Germans in Septem- 
ber 1944, when the 2,000 or so remaining Jews were sent to 
Auschwitz via Sered. Only a fraction of the Jewish population 
survived the Holocaust. The old cemetery was destroyed in a 
town planning project during the war. A small plot including 
the tomb of R. Moses Sofer was spared. In 2002 the entire area 
underwent restoration and reconstruction. The street leading 
to the tomb was named Hatam Sofer. In the ancient Jewish 
quarter only a few original Jewish houses survived. 

Hebrew Printing 

Some 340 Hebrew and Yiddish books were printed in Bratislava 

between 1831 and 1930, the first being Torat ha-Emunah, an 

ethical treatise in Yiddish. But already in 1789 and 1790 two 

smaller items had been issued here. In 1833 the well-known 

Vienna printer Anton Edler von Schmidt bought the press 

of K. Schniskes, and Schmidt's son printed Hebrew books to 

1849. He was succeeded by Heinrich Sieber, and he and his 

heirs were active to 1872, and their successors R and S. Nirschi 

to 1878. O. Ketterisch, later K. Ketterisch and Zimmermann, 

set up a Hebrew press in 1876. The first Jewish printers were 

Lewy and Alkalay, later A. Alkalay only, whose firm printed 

from 1877 to 1920. 

[Samuel Weingarten-Hakohen] 

Contemporary Period 

On April 15, 1945, a few days after the liberation of the city, 
the Jewish community of Bratislava was reestablished, and 
Max Weiss became its chairman. In September, Chief Rabbi 
Markus Lebovic was installed in his post in a ceremony in 
the only synagogue that had not suffered damage during the 
war; the first public prayer services were held there also on 
the occasion of the High Holidays. In 1946 Bratislava became 
the headquarters of the 42 reconstituted Jewish communities 
of Slovakia. Religious functions - ritual slaughter, mikvabt, a 
kosher butcher and canteen, and religious instruction in the 
schools - were reintroduced; the Chief Rabbinate also insured 
the supply of mazzot and kosher wine. In 1947, when the mem- 
bership of the Jewish community had grown to 7,000, a sec- 
ond synagogue was opened. One synagogue building serves 
now as a television studio. International charitable organiza- 
tions (notably *ort and the ^American Jewish Joint Distribu- 
tion Committee) played a prominent role in the revival and 



development of the religious, economic, and social life of the 
Jewish community. Homes for the aged, youth centers, and a 
hospital were also established. The *Ha-Shomer ha-Zair built 
training farms (hakhsharot) to prepare Jewish youth for settle- 
ment in Palestine under the auspices of * Youth Aliyah. Jewish 
periodicals, notably Tribuna, Ha-Mathil, and Ha-Derekh, came 
into being, and Bratislava became the center of the rapidly de- 
veloping Jewish life in Slovakia. An archive on the Holocaust 
period was founded after the war by the Union of Slovakian 
Jewish Communities and a large section of it was later trans- 
ferred to *Yad Vashem. Difficulties were encountered, how- 
ever, in the restitution of Jewish property; the local Slovaks, 
who had become the "Aryan owners" of such property during 
the war, did all they could to prevent its return to its right- 
ful owners. Antisemitic hate propaganda, which accused the 
Jews of having been "the tools of Magyarization and exploit- 
ers of the Slovak people," resulted in anti-Jewish riots and the 
plunder of Jewish property (during the summer of 1946 and 
in March 1948). 

The year 1949 was a turning point in the renewed his- 
tory of the Jewish community. Under the Communist regime 
Jewish religious and cultural life was gradually restricted, the 
property of Jewish organizations was nationalized, and the 
existing social and economic institutions were deprived of 
their Jewish character. An agreement between Czechoslovakia 
and Israel facilitated the emigration of about 4,000 Bratislava 
Jews. In 1949 a new chief rabbi, Elias Elijah Katz, later of Beer- 
sheba, and a new community chairman, Benjamin Eichler, 
were appointed. Any attempts to reactivate Jewish life, how- 
ever, were nipped in the bud. In January 1952 the Bratislava 
Pravda warned against "Jewish citizens who are in the service 
of the American imperialists and are trying to undermine 
Slovak life." Until the end of the decade, the Jewish commu- 
nity, which had been reduced to about 2,000 persons, lived 
under the threat of dismissal from employment, compulsory 
manual work, evacuation to different places of residence, and 
long prison terms. The political changes which took place in 
1963 resulted in the immediate resumption of Jewish activi- 
ties and contact with world Jewry. Several Jews who had been 
wrongfully imprisoned were rehabilitated, and Jews found it 
easier to gain employment. Religious instruction was inten- 
sified and Jewish ceremonies, such as bar mitzvahs and reli- 
gious weddings, became a more frequent occurrence. After 
the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (August 1968), about 
500 Jews left Bratislava. The Jewish population of Bratislava 
in 1969 was estimated at about 1,500. By the early 21 st century 
it had dropped to around 800. 

Following the "Velvet Revolution" of fall 1989, the Jewish 
community also revived. Many individuals who had hidden 
their Jewish identity stepped forward, swelling the local con- 
gregation. The Union developed relations with Jewish com- 
munities elsewhere and started to communicate with Jews in 
Israel originally from Slovakia. The Joint Distribution Com- 
mittee assisted in the restoration of Jewish life. A new rabbi, 
Baruch Mayers, began to officiate in Bratislava's congregation 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



133 



BRATSLAV 



while serving at the same time as chief rabbi of all of Slovakia. 
The synagogue on Hajdukova Street was used for the High 
Holidays, while a small room was utilized for services on reg- 
ular days, though a minyan was not always present. Bratislava 
had a kosher restaurant, a Hebrew kindergarten, a Jewish old 
age home, a hevra kaddisha with a well-kept cemetery, and 
various Jewish associations and circles. As part of the Slovak 
National Museum, there was a Museum of Jewish Culture, 
with small exhibition rooms in the Jewish Street. On the site 
of the former imposing Neolog synagogue a memorial to the 
Slovakian Jews who perished in the Holocaust was erected. In 
the office of the Bratislava's congregation a major collection of 
administrative books of he former famous yeshivah are pre- 
served. A Holocaust Domumentation Center is dedicated to 
research on Slovakian Jewry. 

[Erich Kulka / Yeshayahu Jelinek (2 nd ed.)] 

bibliography: S.H. Weingarten, Sefer Bratislava (i960; 
vol. 7 of Arim ve-Immahot be-Yisrael); H. Gold (ed.), Die Juden und 
Judengemeinde Bratislava... (1932); O. Neumann, Im Schatten des 
Todes (1956); M.D. Weissmandl, Min ha-Mezar (i960); A. Charim, 
Die toten Gemeinden (1966), 37-42; L. Rotkirchen, Hurban Yahadut 
Slovakyah (1961), index; Y. Toury, Mehumah u-Mevukhah be-Mah- 
pekhat 1848 (1968), index s.v. Pressburg; A. Nir, Shevilim be-Magalot 
ha-Esh (1967); mhj, 4 (1938), index. Hebrew printing: P.J. Kohn, 
in: ks, 31 (1955/56), 233rT.; N. Ben-Menahem, ibid., 33 (1957/58), 5296°.; 
Arim ve-Immahot be-Yisrael, 7 (i960), 171. contemporary period: 
P. Meyer et al., Jews in the Soviet Satellites (1953), 69-204, and pas- 
sim; Jewish Studies (Prague, 1955), passim; R. litis (ed.), Die aussaeen 
unter Traenen mitjubel werden sie ernten (1959), 127-38. add. bib- 
liography: PK. 

BRATSLAV, small town in Podolia, Ukraine, on the River 
Bug. A Jew leased the collection of customs duties in Bratslav 
in 1506, and it appears that a Jewish settlement developed 
in the town from that time. In 1545 the Jews were exempted 
from the construction of roads "so that they could travel on 
their commercial affairs." The Jews underwent much suffering 
during the attacks of the Tatars on the town during the 16 th 
century (especially in 1551). At the beginning of the 17 th cen- 
tury, commercial relations were maintained between the Jews 
of Bratslav and those of Lvov. In the ^Councils of the Lands, 
Bratslav was attached to the "Land of Russia," of which Lvov 
was the principal community. 

In 1635 King Ladislas iv confirmed the rights of the 
Jews of Bratslav. At the time of the *Chmielnicki massacres, 
a number of Jews from Bratslav were murdered in Nemirov 
and Tulchin, where they had taken refuge. The community, 
however, was reconstituted soon afterward. In 1664, when the 
Cossacks invaded the land on the western side of the Dnieper 
River, they massacred the Jews in Bratslav. Between Septem- 
ber 7, 1802, and October 16, 1810 (date of his death), Rabbi 
*Nahman of Bratslav lived in the town, and it became an im- 
portant hasidic center during this period. His disciple, Natan 
Steinherz, set up a Hebrew press in the town in 1819 and pub- 
lished the works of his teacher. At the end of that year, the au- 
thorities closed down the press after they had been approached 



by informers. The community numbered 101 according to the 
census of 1765 (195 including Jews in the surrounding areas) 
and 221 in 1790 (398 including those in the surrounding ar- 
eas). After Bratslavs incorporation into Russia (1793), 96 Jew- 
ish merchants and 910 townsmen lived in the district in 1797. 
The Jewish population numbered 3,290 according to the cen- 
sus of 1897 (43% of the total population). In the beginning of 
the 19 th century, most of the industrial enterprises and work- 
shops in the town were owned by Jews, Nearly all the shops 
also belonged to Jews and all the dentists and midwives were 
Jews. Between May 1919 and March 1921, there 14 pogroms 
in Bratslav, over 200 Jews were killed, 600 children became 
orphans, and 1,200 people were left without livelihoods. As 
a result of the pogroms, many Jews left for the bigger towns. 
The population dropped to 1,504 in 1923, rose to 1,840 in 1926, 
and dropped again to 1,010 in 1939 (total population 3,974). 
During the 1920s, many Jews worked as artisans but faced 
discrimination in their unions. The local government refused 
to grant land to Jews who asked to organize a farm coopera- 
tive. Bratslav was taken by the Germans on July 22, 1941, and 
included in Romanian Transnistria on September 1. In the 
same month a ghetto was established, and Jews deported from 
Bessarabia and Bukovina were brought there. At the end of 
December there were 747 Jews in the town. It can be assumed 
that many more had been killed or died there before that time. 
On January 1, 1942, most of the ghetto inmates were deported 
to the Pechora concentration camp and 50 were drowned in 
the South Bug River. There was a Jewish underground in the 
ghetto numbering 16 persons. They were discovered by the 
Romanians and executed. Bratslav was liberated on March 17, 
1944. Three hundred local Jews and 30 refugees were found 
there. In 1989 there were 137 Jews in the town and in 1993 only 
71. In 1995 a monument to those murdered in the Holocaust 
was erected in the local cemetery. 

bibliography: A.D. Rosenthal, Megillat ha-Tevah (1927), 
98-100; M. Osherowitch, Shtet un Shtetlekh in Ukraine, 1 (1948), 
118-31; B. West (ed.), Be-Hevlei Kelayah (1963), 176-7; H.D. Fried- 
berg, Toledot ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Polanyah (1950 2 ), 155 ff. add. bib- 
liography: pk Romanyah; pk Ukrainah, s.v. 

[Shmuel Ettinger / Shmuel Spector (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAUDE, ERNEST ALEXANDER (1922-1958), English 
chemist. Braude was born in Germany and went to England 
in 1937. He spent his student and working life at Imperial Col- 
lege, London, where he became professor of organic chemistry 
in 1955. The first field in which Braude specialized was in the 
spectral properties of organic compounds. He was one of the 
pioneers of the use of radioactive tracers in organic chemistry, 
and also of the thermochemical study of organic reactions; he 
also did research in the field of the chemistry of natural prod- 
ucts, discovered lithium alkenyls, worked on the synthesis of 
vitamin D, and devised a new synthesis for thio acetic acid. 

bibliography: Proceedings of the Chemical Society (1957), 
297-8. 

[Samuel Aaron Miller] 



134 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRAUDE, WILLIAM GORDON 



BRAUDE, JACOB (1902-1977), Anglo-Jewish communal 
leader, educationalist, and philanthropist. Braude was born in 
Fuerth, Bavaria, where his parents settled upon leaving Rus- 
sia. He studied law at Leipzig University and received a doc- 
torate summa-cum-laude for a thesis on Anglo-Saxon Com- 
mon Law. When the legal profession was closed to Jews under 
the Nazi regime, he entered his father-in-law s business. In his 
student days Braude became active in youth work and repre- 
sented the Orthodox (Ezra) movement in the Jewish Youth 
Center established by the community as a result of his efforts. 
In 1938 he emigrated to London, where he became involved in 
communal work. He established, with other European refu- 
gees, the Hendon Adath Yisrael Congregation which was to 
become one of the leading Orthodox synagogues in London 
and of which Braude eventually became a life president. He 
also took an active part in the Jewish secondary school move- 
ment, established by Rabbi Dr. Victor *Schonfeld and devel- 
oped by his son Solomon. 

Braude served as a member of the Executive of the Board 
of Deputies of British Jews, in which he organized the Ortho- 
dox group. He became a vice president of the World Jewish 
Congress (British Section), and served several times as chair- 
man of the Mizrachi Federation and later as its executive vice- 
president. His regular reports on the state of Jewish education 
in Britain and elsewhere in the Jewish world, which were pub- 
lished in the Jewish Chronicle, were recognized as a reliable 
and valuable source of communal information. Braude also 
served on the Congress Tribunal of the World Zionist Organi- 
zation. From 1952 he took an increasing interest in Midrashiat 
Noam, the pioneering yeshivah college at Pardes Hannah, and 
later in its preparatory school at Kiryat Yaakov Herzog, Kfar 
Saba. He founded the Friends of the Midrashia in Britain, of 
which he was chairman, and subsequently chaired its World 
Council as well as its Israeli branch. 

[Alexander Carlebach] 

BRAUDE, MARKUS (Mordekhai Ze'ev; 1869-1949), rabbi, 
educator and Zionist leader. Braude was born in Brest- 
Litovsk (then Russia). He was the son of R. Aryeh Leib Braude 
and his maternal grandfather was the rabbi of Lvov, Zevi 
Hirsch *Ornstein. Braude completed his studies at the Uni- 
versity of Freiburg in 1898. An active Zionist from an early 
age, he attended the First Zionist Congress in Basel (1897), 
and became a leader of the Zionist Organization in Galicia. 
On his initiative Galician Zionists decided to take part in the 
political life of the country, and Braude directed their cam- 
paign for election to the Austrian Parliament (1907). Between 
1909 and 1939 he was a preacher in Lodz. He founded a net- 
work of Jewish secondary schools in Poland and, between 
1920 and 1926, was a member of the Polish senate. He was 
one of the founders of the Institute for Jewish Studies in War- 
saw, and of other public and cultural institutions in Poland. 
Braude settled in Palestine in 1940, was active in the Polish 
Immigrants* Association, and undertook research in the his- 
tory of Galician Jewry. 



bibliography: Sefer ha-Yovel le-M.Z. Braude (1931); Zikhron 
M.Z. Braude (i960); A. Tartakower, in: S.K. Mirsky (ed.)> Ishim u-De- 
muyyot be-Hokhmat Yisrael (1959), 287-98. 

[Getzel Kressel] 

BRAUDE, MAX A. (1913-1982), U.S. rabbi and organization 
executive. Braude was born in Harmony, Pennsylvania. He 
was ordained at the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago 
(1941). Braude joined the U.S. Army during World War 11, and 
became the highest-ranking Jewish chaplain with the armed 
services in Europe, in charge of the welfare of displaced per- 
sons. In 1947 Braude joined the International Refugee Organi- 
zation, with which he remained associated until 1959. In 1951 
he became director of the World ort Union, and in 1957 di- 
rector general of its international office in Geneva. Frequently 
called upon as a consultant by the U.S. government, Braude 
participated in numerous conferences and studies on voca- 
tional and refugee problems. 

[Edward L. Greenstein] 

BRAUDE, WILLIAM GORDON (1907-1988), U.S. Reform 
rabbi and scholar. Braude was born in Telz, Lithuania, the son 
and grandson of rabbis who were scholars at the famed Telz 
yeshivah. In 1920, they left Europe for New York and he was 
enrolled at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva. The family then 
moved to Denver, Colorado, where Braude became a pub- 
lic school student for the first time. In 1922 his father moved 
to Dayton, Ohio, where Braude developed an interest in the 
Reform rabbinate. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati 
(1929), he was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1931. Af- 
ter a year in Rockford, Illinois, he served as rabbi of Temple 
Beth El, Providence, Rhode Island, from 1932. Throughout his 
career, Braude was a scholar-rabbi, writing, publishing, and 
teaching. While in Providence, he studied at Brown University. 
He was awarded his Ph.D. (1939). He joined the Brown faculty, 
first as a lecturer in Hebrew and later in biblical literature. He 
later taught at Yale, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and 
Leo Baeck College. 

As a rabbi, Braude was one of the leaders of the right 
wing within the Reform movement and advocated a return 
to traditional practices and became known as one of the 
leading students of rabbinics in the Reform movement. He 
was a leading supporter of the Hebrew day school concept, 
reintroduced the head covering at his services, and argued 
for respect of the dietary laws and other observances. In 1965 
he participated in the civil rights demonstration led by Martin 
Luther King in Montgomery, Alabama. A member of various 
scholarly bodies, he also served on many civic agencies and 
lectured widely. Braude wrote Jewish Proselyting in the First 
Five Centuries of the Common Era, the Age of the Tannaim 
and Amoraim (1940); a translation with critical notes of Mi- 
drash on Psalms (1959); Pesikta de Rav Kahana (1975), a trans- 
lation with critical notes of the Pesikta Rabbati (1968); and 
Tanna debe Eliyyahu (1980). These books represent impor- 
tant contributions to the study of midrashic literature and 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



135 



BRAUDES, REUBEN ASHER 



are based on manuscripts and early printed editions. The 
synagogue library that bears his name contains more than 
25,000 volumes. 

[Jack Reimer / Michael Berenbaum (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAUDES, REUBEN ASHER (1851-1902), Hebrew novel- 
ist and advocate of social and religious reform. Braudes, who 
was born in Vilna, early established a reputation as a brilliant 
talmudic student, and published his first articles in the rab- 
binic periodical Ha-Levanon (1869). Leaving Vilna at 17, he 
spent three years at the rabbinical seminary at Zhitomir be- 
fore wandering through southern Russia to Odessa, which 
was then the center of the Haskalah (Enlightenment). Influ- 
enced by the critical attitude toward traditional Judaism then 
dominating Hebrew literature, Braudes began to write articles 
advocating the religious and social reform of Jewish life such 
as Si'ah Shaah Ahat Ahar ha-Mavet ("A Conversation One 
Hour After Death"), published in Ha-Meliz (1870), and in his 
first short story, Misterei Beit Zefanyah ("The Mysteries of the 
Zephaniah Family") which appeared in Ha-Shahar (1873). In 
1875 Braudes left Odessa to spend a year in Warsaw before pro- 
ceeding to Lemberg where he edited the monthly Ha-Boker 
Or (1876-79). There he published much of his novel Ha-Dat 
ve ha-Hayyim ("Religion and Life," 1885), an important work 
describing the struggle for religious reform that raged within 
Lithuanian Jewry from 1869 until 1871, as well as many stories, 
articles, and book reviews. 

The years 1879-81 were again spent in Vilna, where he 
edited most of the first volume of a literary miscellany, Gan 
Perahim ("A Garden of Flowers," 1881), which contains an im- 
portant article on the revival of Hebrew. Shocked by the 1881 
pogroms in Russia, he joined the Hibbat Zion, although he 
had previously attacked Smolenskins advocacy of nationalism 
in an article "Beit Yisrael" which appeared in 1880 in David 
Gordons Maggid Mishneh (nos. 49-50). After a brief sojourn 
in St. Petersburg, Braudes fled to Bucharest where from 1882 
to 1884 he edited a Yiddish periodical Yehudit which advo- 
cated Jewish colonization in Palestine. After his expulsion 
from Romania as an alien Jew in 1884, Braudes resided in 
Lemberg until 1891. In 1885 he founded a Hebrew biweekly, 
Ha-Yahadut, of which only four issues appeared. At the same 
time he participated in a story-publishing venture under the 
imprint Eked Sippurim. Part of his second novel Shetei ha- 
Kezavot ("The Two Extremes"), which skillfully depicts the 
clash of contemporary and traditional attitudes and habits 
within Jewish life in and about Odessa, appeared in the same 
series, while a finished version was published in Warsaw in 
1888. In an introduction to his collection of eight stories (some 
of which had previously appeared in Ha-Boker Or), published 
under the title Zekenim im Nearim ("Old and Young," 1886), 
Braudes laments the dearth of essential vocabulary in Hebrew 
which limits the scope of the Hebrew story. In 1888 he edited 
the second volume of the annual Ozar ha-Sifrut published by 
Shealtiel Isaac Graber in Cracow. His short monograph on 
Adam Mickiewicz and the Jews (Cracow, 1890) represents the 



first study in Hebrew of the great Polish poet's attitude toward 
a Jewish renaissance in Palestine. 

From 1891 to 1893 Braudes resided in Cracow, editing a 
weekly which appeared under the names Ha-Zeman and Ruah 
ha-Zeman in alternate weeks, to avoid paying the duty lev- 
ied on a weekly. In the former he included the first part of an 
unfinished novel, Me-Ayin u-Lean ("Whence and Whither") 
which appeared separately in Cracow in 1891; and in the latter 
he published a long biographical novel Shirim Attikim ("Old 
Songs"), the finished version of which appeared posthumously 
in Cracow in 1903. Both novels depict the ideological struggles 
of contemporary Jewish life. 

From 1893 to 1896 Braudes again resided in Lemberg, 
where from 1894 he edited a Yiddish weekly, which also ap- 
peared in alternate weeks, under the titles Der Karmel and Der 
Vekker. With the removal of the duty on weeklies, the jour- 
nal appeared each week under the name Juedisches Wochen- 
blatty serving as the official Zionist organ in eastern Galicia. 
Toward the end of 1896 Braudes moved to Vienna where he 
resided until his death. Here he served as a correspondent 
for Ha-Maggid he-Hadash, in which capacity he attended the 
First World Zionist Congress in 1897. He was appointed edi- 
tor of the Yiddish edition of the Zionist weekly, Die Welt, by 
Theodor *Herzl. During his last years he composed many 
articles, sketches and stories, although his plans to complete 
his unfinished novels were realized only in the case of Shirim 
Attikim. 

Braudes' fame as an author rests primarily on the novels, 
Ha-Dat ve-ha-Hayyim and Shetei ha-Kezavot, both of which 
display a highly developed sense of literature. The narrative is 
clear, concise, and interesting, and the presentation straight- 
forward and direct. The plots, particularly in the case of Shetei 
ha-Kezavot, are skillfully constructed, with events portrayed 
in a natural and unforced sequence. In spite of the powerful 
dramatic tensions and conflicts experienced by the principal 
characters, the novels are almost entirely free from the crude 
melodrama and wildly improbable devices to which most of 
his contemporaries were prone. Both characterization and 
dialogue are competent within the linguistic limitations of 
the period. Even the didactic elements which permeate the 
Hebrew literature of that time are mostly introduced without 
too much grating on the reader's susceptibilities. Only in the 
third part of Ha-Dat ve-ha-Hayyim is the literary aspect de- 
liberately neglected in favor of Braudes* didactic purpose. In 
Shetei ha-Kezavot the authors advocacy of social reform is in- 
troduced with such consummate skill that the novel achieves 
an artistic unity unrivalled in the Hebrew literature of the pe- 
riod. By utilizing his penetrating knowledge of Jewish life in 
Eastern Europe, Braudes succeeded in depicting the spiritual 
conflicts which raged within the community in his time with 
an uncanny accuracy. 

bibliography: Klausner, Sifrut, 5 (1955 2 ), 345-402; D. Pat- 
terson, Hebrew Novel in Czarist Russia (1964), 188-209; Waxman, 
Literature, 3 (i960), 301-8. 

[David Patterson] 



136 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRAUN, FELIX 



BRAUDO, ALEXANDER ISAYEVICH (1864-1924), Rus- 
sian-Jewish historian and civic leader. After graduating from 
the University of Dorpat he became head of the bibliographical 
section of the Historical Society at the St. Petersburg (Lenin- 
grad) University and was appointed librarian of the Imperial 
Public Library. Braudo was active in many associations fight- 
ing for social equality and freedom for Russian Jews. He edited 
Trudovaya pom.osh.ch. ("Workers' Relief"), cooperated with the 
^Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews, and 
was on the editorial staff of the periodicals Voskhod and Per- 
ezhitoye. He was also one of the founders and directors of the 
publishing house Rasum y dedicated to the fight against anti- 
semitism. His review Russian Correspondence > published in 
London, Paris, and Berlin, provided information about Rus- 
sian politics, and especially about anti- Jewish activities of the 
Russian authorities. Braudo was among the initiators of the 
massive history of the Jewish people, Istoriya yevreyskogo nar- 
oda, contributing largely to volumes 11 (1914) and 12 (1921). 

bibliography: Yevreyskaya letopis, 4 (1926), 195-6. 

BRAUDO, YEVGENI MAXIMOVICH (1882-1939), musi- 
cologist. Born in Riga, Braudo studied music at the Riga Mu- 
sic School (1891-97) and philology at St. Petersburg Univer- 
sity (graduating in 1911). He studied music history with Hugo 
Riemann and Hermann Kretzchmar in Germany. Braudo was 
appointed professor at the Russian Institute of Art History in 
1921 and later professor at Leningrad University. He contrib- 
uted music criticism to Pravda and was music editor of the 
first edition of the Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya. He 
wrote a history of music in three volumes (1922-27) as well 
as works on Bach, Wagner, Borodin, Nietzsche, Beethoven, 
Schubert, E.T.A. Hoffman, and the foundations of material 
culture in music. 

BRAUN, ABRAHAM (Sergei; 1881-1940), Bundist leader in 
Latvia. Born in *Riga, Braun joined the *Bund in 1900 while 
a student at the Riga Polytechnikum. A brilliant speaker and 
propagandist, he worked clandestinely on behalf of the party 
in various towns and was imprisoned several times for revolu- 
tionary activities. Braun took part in 1906 in the seventh con- 
ference of the Bund in Berne and in its seventh convention in 
Lvov. He was also sent to South Africa as an emissary of the 
party. After 1917 Braun renewed his activities in the Bund, and 
at the eighth party convention that year he was elected to the 
central committee. From 1921 he lived in Riga, where he was 
active as a speaker and a journalist. After the Fascist take-over 
in Latvia in 1934, he was sent to a detention camp, and later 
deported. From 1938 he lived in New York, traveled as speaker 
for the Arbeiter-Ring (^Workmen s Circle), and contributed 
to its publication Friend. 

bibliography: J.S. Herz (ed.), Doyres Bundistn (1956), 
298-307. 

BRAUN, ADOLF (1862-1929), Austrian-born socialist leader 
in Germany who was active in the Social Democratic Party 



for more than 40 years. He was the brother-in-law of Victor 
*Adler. Adolf Braun, son of a wealthy Jewish entrepreneur, 
joined the socialist movement in Austria as a student. In 
1889 he went to Germany and became editor of several so- 
cialist newspapers. On his expulsion from Prussia under the 
anti-socialist laws, he edited the Nuremberg socialist daily, 
Fraenkische Tagespost. Although he belonged to the left wing 
of the Social Democrats, Braun did not vote against war cred- 
its during World War 1. He was, however, among the first to 
demand the abdication of the Kaiser in 1918. His articles of 
that period were reprinted in the book Sturmvoegel der Rev- 
olution (1919). After his naturalization, Braun was elected to 
the National Assembly in Weimar in 1919 and then to the 
Reichstag. From 1920 to 1927 he was a member of the Social 
Democratic Party executive. He wrote on economic, social, 
and trade union questions. Many socialist journalists received 
their training in newspaper work under his guidance. 

His brother heinrich braun (1854-1927) founded, to- 
gether with Karl Kautsky and Wilhelm Lichtknecht, the peri- 
odical of the German Social Democrats, Neue Zeit, in 1883. Pe- 
riodicals devoted to the study of social policy and founded by 
him included the Archiv fuer soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik 
of which he was editor until 1903; his successors were Werner 
Sombart and Max Weber. Braun also edited socialist publi- 
cations including the Neue Gesellschaft. In 1903-04 Braun sat 
in the Reichstag but his election was declared invalid and his 
opponent defeated him in the following by-election. His wife 
and co-worker was the author Lily Braun, daughter of Gen- 
eral von Kretschman. 

add. bibliography: ndb, 2 (1955), 539-41; U. Lischke, Lily 
Braun (2000); I. Voss, in: M. Grunewald and H.M. Bock (eds.), Le 
milieu intellectuel de gauche en Allemagne (2002), 55-74 (Ger.). 

BRAUN (Brown), ARIE (1934- ), chief hazzan of the idf for 

many years. Born in Jerusalem, Braun first trained as a hazzan 
under his father, Nahum Yizhak Brown, and the hazzan Zal- 

• • • • 

man Rivlin. He further studied voice development and mu- 
sic under Rosenstein and the musicians Shmuel Rivlin, Yosef 
b. Barukh, and Yehoshua Zohar, and won a study grant from 
the Norman Fund. He was senior hazzan of the Ramah and 
Beth-El synagogues of Tel Aviv, and officiated at services and 
concerts in Australia, South Africa, Mexico, the United States 
and Canada. In 1974 he won first prize at the Hazzanut Fes- 
tival in Israel. Braun served as chid hazzan of the idf with 
the rank of major from 1976 to 1981, when he was promoted 
to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the first time that an idf 
hazzan has received this rank. He has made a number of re- 

• 

cordings. He is the proud possessor of a stentorian baritone 
voice, and has made a name for himself singing the Moishe 
*Oysher repertoire. 

[Akiva Zimmerman / Raymond Goldstein (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAUN, FELIX (1885-1973), Austrian poet, playwright, and 
novelist. Braun was born in Vienna, where he studied his- 
tory and literature. From 1928 he taught at the universities of 



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BRAUN, MIECZYSLAW 



Padua and Palermo, but in 1939, because of his Jewish origin, 
he had to flee to London. He returned to Austria after the end 
of World War 11. Braun was an impressionist poet, deeply in- 
fluenced by his friend Hugo von *Hofmannsthal. His first 
collection of verse was Das neue Leben (1913); Viola d'amore 
(1953) contained a selection of his poems spanning the years 
1903-53. As a playwright Braun at one time showed a fondness 
for themes drawn from classical mythology, such as Tantalos 
(1917) and Aktaion (1921), and he also dramatized the biblical 
story of Esther (1925). Later, however, he turned to histori- 
cal subjects, as in the tragedy Kaiser Karl der Fuenfte (1936) 
and Rudolf der Stifter (1956). His Agnes Altkirchner (1927) is 
a seven-volume novel depicting Austria's decay and eventual 
collapse after World War 1. Braun's autobiography, Das Licht 
der Welt (1949), and his book of reminiscences, Zeitgefaehrten 
(1963), both provide an insight into Viennese culture in the 
early years of the 20 th century. 

bibliography: F. Lennartz, Deutsche Dichter und Schrijistel- 
ler unserer Zeit (1959), 98-100. add. bibliography: D.G. Daviau, 
Bruecken ueber dem Abgrund (1994), 317-36. 

[Sol Liptzin] 

BRAUN (Braunstein), MIECZYSLAW (1900-1941), Polish 
poet. Braun published verse collections, some of which reflect 
the industrial society in his native Lodz: Rzemiosla ("Crafts- 
manship," 1926), Przemysly ("Industry," 1928), Zywe stronice 
("Living Pages," 1936), Sonety (1937), and Poezjapracy, Wiersze 
wybrane ("Poetry of Toil, Selected Verse," 1938). He died of ty- 
phus in the Warsaw Ghetto. 

BRAUN, YEHEZKIEL (1922- ), Israeli composer. Braun 
was born in Germany but was brought to Eretz Israel at 
the age of two. He studied composition with A.U. *Bosco- 
vitch at the Academy of Music, Tel Aviv, where he was ap- 
pointed as a teacher in 1966. Braun also studied Gregorian 
chant with Dom Jean Claire at Solesmes (1975) and served as 
a jury member for prizes in Gregorian chant at the Conserva- 
toire National Superieur, Paris (1990, 1996, 1997); he published 
a study on a Hebrew Sephardi cantillation: Iyyunim ba-Melos 
ha-Sephardi-Yerushalmi (Peamim 19). Braun is best known 
for his vocal compositions, which are frequently performed. 
He has shown originality of invention in a number of works 
of striking value. In his early works he adopted the ideol- 
ogy of a national Israeli music, merging folk dance patterns 
with cantilation motifs and modal chromaticism. His com- 
positions include Three Movements for Solo Flute (1955); Con- 
certo for Flute and Strings (1957); Psalm for Strings, Sonata for 
Piano (1957); Pedals on Vacation for Harp (1964); Apartment to 
Let (1968), for narrator and orchestra; Seven Sephardic Ro- 
mances, for voices and piano (1968); Serenade for Chamber 
Orchestra (1971), commissioned by the Tel Aviv Foundation 
for Literature and Art; Cantici Canticorum Caput in for Solo 
and Choir a capella, commissioned by the Tel Aviv Founda- 
tion for the 1973 Zimriyyah. His subsequent major works in- 



clude Itturim li-Megillat Ruth ("Illuminations to the Book 
of Ruth," 1983); Piano Trio No. 1 (1988), Kinnoro shel David, 
cantata (1990); Mi-Shirei Itzik (I. Manger, Y. Orland), for two 
sopranos, alt, and piano (1997); Fantasia Lirica for guitar 
and orchestra (1998); Hexagon, divertimento for string sex- 
tet (1998). 

He was awarded the Israel Prize in 2003. 

add. bibliography: Grove online; mgg 2 . 

[Uri (Erich) Toeplitz / Gila Flam and Israela Stein (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAUNER, HARRY (1908-1988), Romanian ethnomusi- 
cologist and brother of surrealist painter Victor Brauner. Dis- 
ciple and long time assistant of Constantin Brailoiu, he was 
a hardworking member of the sociological teams that made 
pioneering monographical and interdisciplinary studies on 
rural Romania. From 1928 to 1939 he was a very active col- 
laborator of the Arhiva de Folklore (Folk Music Archive) of 
the Societatea Compozitorilor (Composers' Society), which 
he then headed as deputy director (1944-1948). From 1939 he 
was an honorary member of The English Folk Dance and Mu- 
sic Society (London), and for almost two years (1948-1950) 
taught folk music studies at the Conservatory of Music in Bu- 
charest. Until 1950 Brauner excelled mainly as folk music col- 
lector, and, after the late 1960s, as promoter of Romanian folk 
music that he considered to be genuine and traditional within 
nationalist frameworks. His mid-career was crowned by tak- 
ing over managerial responsibility for the two national folk 
music archives that were scattered and somehow abandoned 
after World War 11 and he succeeded in founding the Institute 
of Folklore (1949), an institution of powerful, nationwide and 
even international academic prominence. Brauner headed this 
institution for just one year, after which he was involved in a 
political and antisemitic plot (known as "Patra§canu's trial"). 
After spending twelve years in jail and two years in an im- 
posed dwelling in a countryside settlement, he was no longer 
accepted in the academic institution he had founded (which 
became more and more ideologized, nationalistic, ethnocen- 
tric, and propagandistic). He started to publish original chil- 
dren's songs and newspaper articles, served as consultant for 
the national records company (Electrecord), and briefly acted 
as founder and leader of a laboratory for ethnomusicology at 
the Conservatory of Music in Bucharest (1971-1974). His jour- 
nalistic articles from the 1970s were collected in the volume 
Sa auzi iarba cum creste ("Listening to the Growing Grass"; 
!979)> an d a collection of monovocal songs composed during 
his imprisonment appeared twice, posthumously (1998, 2000). 
His complex personality was emphasized by several academic 
biographical essays as well as by a memorial book published 
by Irina Nicolau and Carmen Huluta in 1999. Brauner s wife, 
artist Lena Constante, outlived him and continued to work 
for preserving, improving and enhancing Brauner s memory 
and intellectual legacy. 

Harry Brauner was a tragic character. Although he lec- 
tured brilliantly at several international folk music festivals 



138 



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BRAUNSTEIN, MENAHEM MENDEL 



in the 1930s (London, Istanbul), he failed to have an inter- 
national career and was eventually prevented from enjoying 
national prominence. 

[Marin Marian (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAUNER, ISAAC (Wincenty; 1887-1944), painter, graphic 
artist, sculptor, and stage designer. Brauner was born in Lodz, 
Poland, and received a traditional Jewish education. His artis- 
tic and musical gifts manifested themselves already at an early 
age; he attended a private art school in Lodz and took private 
violin classes. In 1907, he started his education at the Berlin 
Conservatoire, but had to give up a professional musical ca- 
reer because of a hand injury, deciding to dedicate himself en- 
tirely to art. In 1908-11, he studied at the Hochschule fuer die 
bildende Kuenste in Berlin. At Berlin art exhibitions, Brauner 
made his first acquaintance with Van Gogh's paintings, became 
an ardent admirer of his art, and even adopted his name - 
Wincenty. Another formative influence of this period was the 
work of the German impressionists, mainly members of "Der 
blaue Reiter" group whose artistic ideas and plastic techniques 
Brauner thoroughly adopted.. On the eve of World War 1, he 
returned to Lodz. In 1914-15, he showed his work at exhibi- 
tions arranged by the local Artistic Society and was praised 
by critics as one of the most promising young Polish artists. 
In Lodz, he became close to a group of young Jewish artists 
who shared national ideas and aspired to achieve an organic 
synthesis between Jewish tradition and European modernist 
art. Brauner became one of the most steadfast apologists for 
these ideas and strove to realize them in his work. As a lead- 
ing figure of the Jewish artistic movement in Poland, he was 
a member of almost every Jewish modernist group or asso- 
ciation. In 1919, he participated in the exhibition organized 
by the Artistic Section of the Kultur-Liga in Bialystok. Dur- 
ing the same period, he was among the initiators and ideolo- 
gists of the "Yung Yiddish" group in Lodz (1919-21). He also 
maintained close contact with the "Khalyastre" group, which 
brought together Yiddish modernist writers, and produced a 
cover drawing for the groups first anthology (1921). While liv- 
ing in Lodz, he founded, together with Moshe *Broderzon, an 
Yiddish puppet show "Had Gadya" (1922-23), executing the 
settings and making puppets for its productions. In the same 
period, he designed the settings for productions staged by 
Yiddish drama theaters in Lodz and Gdansk. In 1924, Brauner 
moved to Warsaw and had his first one-man show, which re- 
vealed him as one of the most radical Jewish painters in Po- 
land. Although his painting retained its general figurative 
style, he experimented radically with form and implemented 
techniques of coloristic abstraction. Most of the subjects that 
he treated in his paintings, chasings, wooden sculptures, and 
typography were scenes of Jewish shtetl life or episodes from 
Jewish folklore. In the 1930s he continued his theater work. 
In the late 1930s, he again settled in Lodz. From 1939, when 
the city was occupied by the Germans, he was confined to the 
local ghetto, portraying ghetto life in his graphic works and 



paintings, part of which survived. In July 1944, he was sent to 
Auschwitz in of one of the last "selection" operations. 

bibliography: Y. Sandel, Umgekomene Yidishe Kinstler 
in Poiln, vol. 1 (1957), 66-71; J. Malinowski. Grupa "Jung Idysz" i 
zidowskie srodowisko "Nowej Sztuki" w Polsce. 1918-1923 (1987); idem, 
Malarstwo i rzezba Zydow Polskich w xix i xx wieku (2000), 154-55, 
188-89; C. Shmeruk, "Mojzesz Broderson a teatr w jezyky jidisz w 
Lodzi (przychynki do monografii)," in: Lodzkie sceny zydowskie. Stu- 
dia i materialy (2000), 62, 65-66. 

[Hillel Kazovsky (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAUNER, VICTOR (1903-1966), surrealist painter. 
Brauner, born in Pietra Neamt, Romania, grew up in Bucha- 
rest, where he joined the avant-garde of Romanian artists. In 
1930 he settled in Paris where he associated with Andre Breton 
and the surrealists and participated in all the major surrealist 
exhibitions until 1949. During World War 11 he hid from the 
Germans in an Alpine village and returned to Paris in 1945. 
Some of Brauner's early works contain an element of social 
satire (e.g., L'etrange cas de monsieur K). He later elaborated a 
complex private world of symbolism and mythology, and drew 
on numerous sources of inspiration in order to make this pri- 
vate world universal. To this end he studied myth, psychology, 
ethnology, child art, the art of the insane, and that of primitive 
peoples. In 1948 he made a series of paintings with himself as 
subject (e.g., Victor, Empereur de Vespace Infini). After 1951, in 
a state of deep depression, he painted his series of "Rectrac- 
tes": These are people who find no peace in the world. Unable 
to escape, they turn, instead, a terrifying gaze on the spectator 
(e.g., Regard de la lumiere). Many of Brauner s later works were 
almost abstract, executed with a wry sense of humor. 

bibliography: A. JourTroy, Brauner (Fr. 1959); S. Alexan- 
drian, Victor Brauner, Yilluminateur (1954); idem (ed.), Les dessins 
magiques de Victor Brauner (1965). 

BRAUNSTEIN, MENAHEM MENDEL (pen name Mi- 
bashan; 1858-1944), Hebrew writer and leading figure in the 
Zionist movement in Romania. He received his early educa- 
tion in Jassy and had a broad knowledge of the Bible and of 
traditional Hebrew literature. After his marriage, however, 
he took up secular studies and learned several European lan- 
guages. In 1887 he was one of the founders in Jassy of Doresh 
le-Zion, an organization which sought to revive the movement 
of Romanian Jews to Palestine following the decline which 
had set in after the relatively large-scale emigration during 
1882-83. From 1887, he edited the newspaper Juedischer Volks- 
freund (German in Hebrew script). He helped found Oholei 
Shem, an association aimed at disseminating knowledge of 
Jewish history and literature among Romanian Jewry. For 23 
years he taught Hebrew subjects in Jewish schools in various 
towns in Romania. He advocated teaching Hebrew through 
the medium of Hebrew, founded Hebrew libraries, and strug- 
gled to overcome the objections of an apathetic public and of 
assimilationist opponents to the teaching of Hebrew in Jewish 
schools. He wrote Divrei ha-Yamim li-Venei Yisrael ("History 



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BRAUNTHAL, JULIUS 



of the Jews." Warsaw, 1897, 1904) and Sefer ha-Moreh ("The 
Teachers Book," Piatra, 1910). From 1885 he also contributed to 
the Jewish press in German and Romanian but wrote mainly 
for the Hebrew press. He settled in Erez Israel in 1914, and con- 
tinued writing stories and poems, especially for young people. 
Four volumes of his works were published between 1928 and 
1937. Braunstein was one of the last modern Hebrew authors 
to use a purely biblical style. His translations from European 
literature include: Lehmanns The House ofAguilar (St. Peters- 
burg, 1896); Edmondo de Amicis II Cuore (Warsaw, 1923); and 
Swifts Gullivers Travels (Tel Aviv, 1944). 

bibliography: Y. Klausner, Hibbat Ziyyon be-Romanyah 
(1958), 259-68. 

[Yehuda Slutsky] 

BRAUNTHAL, JULIUS (1891-1972), Austrian journalist, 
historian, and socialist leader. The son of a bookkeeper who 
emigrated from Russia, Braunthal joined the Socialist youth 
movement in Vienna at the age of 15 when he was a book- 
binders apprentice. He participated in the mutiny of the Aus- 
tro-Hungarian Navy at Cattaro (Boka Kotorska) at the end of 
World War 1, and he was appointed adjutant to the undersec- 
retary of state for the armed forces when the Austrian social- 
ists joined the government. His journalistic activities covered 
a wide range. He was deputy-editor of the Arbeiterzeitung y 
the Austrian socialist daily, founder and editor of the popular 
daily Das kleine Blatt, and for many years editor of the social- 
ist monthly Der Kampf. Braunthal was imprisoned for a year 
by the Austrian government in 1934, and after his release im- 
migrated to England where he joined the staffof The Tribune, 
and later became editor of the International Socialist Forum. 
In 1939 he worked under Friedrich *Adler in the secretariat 
of the Labor and Socialist International in Brussels and after 
World War 11 he became secretary of the reconstructed So- 
cialist International. 

BraunthaPs enormous literary output includes a massive 
two-volume Geschichte der Internationale (1961-63) and bi- 
ographies of Victor and Friedrich Adler and Otto *Bauer. He 
also compiled anthologies of the writings of Victor *Gollancz, 
Otto Bauer, Friedrich Austerlitz, and Zsigmund *Kunfi and 
was editor of the Yearbook of the International Socialist Labour 
Movement and of the Yearbook of the International Free Trade 
Union Movement. Braunthal supported Labor Zionism in the 
Vienna Socialist press. In his autobiography, In Search of the 
Millennium (1945), he stressed the roots of the socialist idea 
in Jewish messianism and discussed the impact of this Jewish 
background on certain socialist leaders. 

add. bibliography: A. Barkai, "The Austrian Social Dem- 
ocrats and the Jews," in: Wiener Library Bulletin, 24 (1970); J. Bunzl, 
"Arbeiterbewegung, 'Judenfrage' und Antisemitismus: am Beispiel des 
Wiener Bezirks Leopoldstadt," in: Bewegung und Klasse: Studien zur 
oesterreichischen Arbeiter geschichte (1979); H. Gruber, Red Vienna: Ex- 
periment in Working Class Culture 1919-1934 (1991); J. Jacobs, On So- 
cialists and the Jewish Question after Marx (1992); A. Rabinbach, The 
Crisis of Austrian Socialism: From Red Vienna to Civil War, 1927-1934 



(1983); R.S. Wistrich, Socialism and the Jews: The Dilemmas of Assimi- 
lation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (1982). 

[Robert Weltsch / Lisa Silverman (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAVERMAN, AVISHAY (1948- ), Israeli economist and 
president of Ben-Gurion University. His fields of inquiry are 
development economics, agricultural economics, industrial 
organization, public policy, and management of water re- 
sources. Braverman was born in Ram at Gan, Israel. In 1968 he 
graduated in economics and statistics from Tel Aviv University 
and in 1976 he received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford 
University. From 1976 until 1990 he served as senior economist 
and as a division chief in the World Bank in Washington. In 
this position he participated in research programs, projects, 
and policy work of the World Bank for South America, Af- 
rica, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. In 1990 he 
was appointed president of Ben-Gurion University and suc- 
ceeded in getting it out of the red. Under his presidency, the 
university tripled its student body. Braverman was made a 
member of several international economic associations, the 
Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, the European Academy 
of Sciences and Arts, and the Israeli- American High-Tech 
Commission for Science and Technology. He was awarded 
the Ben-Gurion Prize in 1999 for his leadership in develop- 
ing the Negev. He wrote several books and lectured on glo- 
balization, educational reform, and the Middle East. In 2006 
he was elected to the Knesset on the Labor list. 

[Shaked Gilboa (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAWER, ABRAHAM JACOB (1884-1975), Israeli geog- 
rapher and historian. Brawer, who was born in Stry, Ukraine, 
studied in Vienna at the university and at the rabbinical sem- 
inary. From 1910 to 1911 he taught at a secondary school in 
Tarnopol. While there he published Dov Ber *BirkenthaTs 
Divrei Binah which dealt with false Messiahs in Jewish his- 
tory (Ha-Shiloah, 33 (1917); 38 (1921). In 1911 he settled in Erez 
Israel and taught at the Ezra Teachers Seminary in Jerusalem. 
In the summer of 1914 he taught in Salonika and from 1915 to 
1918 in Constantinople, where he also served as rabbi of the 
Ashkenazi congregation. After pursuing research work in ge- 
ography at the University of Vienna, he returned in 1920 to 
the Teachers Seminary in Jerusalem, where he taught until 
1949. He wrote Avak-Derakhim (2 vols., 1944-46) about his 
travels in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Persia and his descriptive 
Ha-Arez (later Erez Yisrael), the first modern regional geogra- 
phy of Erez Israel, was published in 1928 (3 rd ed. 1954). Brawer 
also published several textbooks on geography, an atlas, and 
maps and was geography editor of the Hebrew Encyclopedia. 
He was one of the three founding members of the *Israel Ex- 
ploration Society and its first honorary secretary. 

BRAWER, MOSHE (1919- ), Israeli geographer, special- 
izing in borders, cartography, and the Arab village. Brawer 
was born in Vienna in 1919 and immigrated to Israel in 1920 



140 



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BRAZER, ABRAM 



with his family. From 1934 to 1938 he studied teaching in the 
Mizrachi Teachers Seminar in Jerusalem. In 1938 he studied 
geography and geology at the University of London and in 
1939-42 ne studied geology and mathematics at the Hebrew 
University of Jerusalem. In 1945 he returned to the University 
of London, graduating in geography and geology in 1947. In 
1950 he received his masters degree there in geography and 
in 1958 his Ph.D. In 1964 he joined the departments of geog- 
raphy at Tel Aviv and Bar-Ilan Universities. In 1980-83 he was 
dean of the Faculty of Humanities in Tel Aviv University, and 
in 1989 he became professor emeritus in Tel Aviv and Bar-Ilan 
Universities. During these years he was also visiting professor 
in universities all over the world. In addition to his academic 
positions, Brawer served on the editorial boards of Ha- Zqf eh 
(1941-65) and the Palestine Post (1940-45). He was the editor 
of the geographical section of the Hebrew Encyclopedia from 
1953 to 1973 and from 1963 to 1997 he served as geographical 
advisor to the Ministry of Education. In the 1980s and 1990s 
he served as a government adviser on internal and external 
borders. Brawer has hundreds of publications to his credit, 
including 19 books and atlases, among them Regional Geog- 
raphy Atlas of the Middle East (1964), University Atlas (1973), 
The Green Line: The Border of the West Bank (1980), and Isra- 
els Borders - Past, Present and Future (1988). In 2002 he was 
awarded the Israel Prize for his contribution to the field of ge- 
ography. The committee cited his efforts to disseminate geo- 
graphical knowledge and apply it in public and political life. 

[Shaked Gilboa (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAY-SUR-SEINE, village in the department of Seine-et- 
Marne, central France. In 1190, after the execution of a Chris- 
tian who had murdered a Jew, a rumor spread that the Jews 
had crucified the murderer in order to mock the death of Jesus. 
The king of France, Philip Augustus, dispatched an armed 
force to the town, and ordered the entire Jewish community to 
be burnt at the stake. The identification of the place in question 
has been disputed, some scholars placing it in Bresmes, other 
in Brie-Comte-Robert. Toward the middle of the 13 th century, 
Jews were again found living in Bray-sur-Seine. They seem to 
have returned there in 1315 after the general expulsion of the 
Jews from France in 1306. The Rue des Juifs was named Rue 
Emile Zola at the beginning of the 20 th century. 

bibliography: Gross, Gal Jud, 123!?.; Neubauer, in: rej, 9 
(1884), 64; L.A. Roubault, Bray-sur-Seine (1908), 26 ff.; Bouquet, in: 
Recueil des Historiens de France, 17 (1878), n. 769. 

[Bernhard Blumenkranz] 

BRAZ, OSIP (Joseph; 1873-1936), painter. Braz was born 
in Odessa, Ukraine. He studied at the Odessa Art School 
and on completing the course was awarded a Grand Bronze 
Medal. He later continued his art education in Munich, where 
in 1891-93 he attended Sh. Halloshis private art school and 
took drawing classes at the Academy of Art. In 1894, he lived 
in Holland studying old masters. In 1895-96, Braz studied at 



the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In the same period, P. 
Tretyakov, a prominent patron of art and collector of Rus- 
sian painting, commissioned Braz to execute a portrait of A. 
Chekov. The painting, which brought the artist fame, became 
the best-known portrait of the writer. From 1900, Braz was a 
regular participant of "World of Art" exhibits. He established 
a private art school in St. Petersburg that remained open until 
1905. In 1907-11, he resided mainly in France, where together 
with portraits, his favorite genre, he created landscapes and 
still lifes. Under the influence of contemporary French art, 
Braz' manner underwent changes, his compositions becoming 
simpler, colors more intensive, and decorative features more 
pronounced. At the same time, he continued to execute por- 
traits, and by World War 1 had created a gallery of portraits 
of prominent figures in Russian culture and art. After 1917, 
Braz participated in major exhibits of Russian artists both in 
Russia and West Europe. In 1918-24, he served as the curator 
and manager of the Department of Dutch Art at the Hermit- 
age, being also active in the restoration of paintings. In 1924, 
Braz was accused of engaging in illegal art trade, arrested, 
and imprisoned in the correctional forced-labor camp on the 
Solovets Islands. He was released in 1926 and sent into exile 
in Novgorod. Soon afterwards, Braz was allowed to return to 
Leningrad and to resume his work at the Hermitage. In 1928, 
he left for Germany and in the same year settled in France. He 
lived in Paris and engaged in the antiques trade while continu- 
ing to paint. He participated in collective exhibits of emigrant 
artists. He had a one-man show at a Paris gallery in 1930. 

bibliography: O.L. Leykind, K.V. Makhrov, and, D.J. Se- 
veriukhin, Artists of the Russian Diaspora 1917-1939: Biographical 
Dictionary (1991), 169-70 (Rus.). 

[Hillel Kazovsky (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAZER, ABRAM (1892-1942), painter, graphic artist, and 
sculptor. Brazer was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia. He studied 
art at the Kishinev Art School in 1905-10 and at the Ecole des 
Arts Decoratifs, Paris, in 1912-14. He became close to a group 
of Jewish artists of La Ruche studios in Paris and executed 
several portraits of its members. He exhibited at the salons in 
Paris. In 1916, he returned to Russia and settled in Petrograd. 
He was a member of the Jewish Society for the Encouragement 
of the Arts and participated in its exhibitions in Petrograd 
and Moscow (1916, 1917). In 1917, Brazer showed his works at 
"World of Art" exhibition in Petrograd, and later in the same 
year moved to Vitebsk. In 1918-23, Brazer taught painting and 
sculpture at the Vitebsk Peoples Art School established by 
Marc *Chagall. In 1924, Brazer moved to Minsk. In the 1920s 
and 1930s, he participated in many exhibits in Minsk and 
Moscow. Working in all the genres, including landscapes and 
still lifes, he gave a prominent place to Jewish themes in his 
work. He executed a number of sculptural portraits of lead- 
ing figures in Jewish culture and art, among them the artist 
Y. Pan (1921, 1926), the Jewish actor S. *Mikhoels (1926), the 
Yiddish poet I. *Kharik (1932), and others. He had a one-man 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



141 



BRAZIL 



show in 1941 in Minsk. When the war broke out, he missed 
the chance to be evacuated from Minsk and remained in the 

ghetto, where he perished. 

bibliography: Exhibition of Works of A.M. Brazer and L.M. 
Leytman. Cat. Minsk (1941), 1-14 (Rus.); M.S. Katser, The Byelorus- 
sian Soviet Sculpture (1954), 5-14 (Rus.); History of Belorussian Art, 
vol. 4, 1917-1939 (1990), 153-60, 270-74 (Belorussian). 

[Hillel Kazovsky (2 nd ed.)] 

BRAZIL, South American federal republic; general popula- 
tion (est.) 183 million (2005); Jewish population 97,000. 

Jewish history in Brazil is divided into four distinct peri- 
ods with a specific interval: (a) The presence of *New Chris- 
tians and the action of the ^Inquisition during the Portuguese 
colonial period (1500-1822); (b) An interval under Dutch colo- 
nialism, with the settlement of a Jewish community in ^Recife, 
Pernambuco, Northeastern Brazil, in the 17 th century, when 
the Dutch promoted religious freedom for the Jews; (c) The 
modern period, when Brazil became an independent country 
(1822), up to the proclamation of the Republic (1889), when 
non-Catholic religions were accepted. The beginning of scat- 
tered immigration to some cities was followed by the estab- 
lishment of the first Jewish community in the city of Belem in 
the state of Para, in the north of Brazil; (d) The period of the 
Republic (in 1889 Brazil adopted a constitution that guaran- 
teed religious freedom), from the first decade of the 20 th cen- 
tury, when communities settled in agricultural colonies of the 
Jewish Colonization Association (ica) in Rio Grande do Sul, 
in the south of Brazil, to the years of World War 1, when or- 
ganized Jewish communities settled in some of the main cit- 
ies of Brazil, particularly in *Rio de Janeiro, *Sao Paulo, and 
*Porto Alegre. 

Estimates of the number of Jews in Brazil in 2005 range 
between 97,000 and 130,000 (the latter adopted by the Jew- 
ish institutions in the country). It is the fourth largest Jewish 
community in America, after the United States, Canada, and 
Argentina. The main Jewish communities are located in Sao 
Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, 
Recife, and Salvador. Although it makes up less than 0.01% of 
the total population of the country, the Jewish communities 
of these state capitals have a solid institutional network and 
the Jews play an important role in many different fields and 
activities in the country including the economy, culture, the 
professions, and the arts, thus forming a minority whose par- 
ticipation and visibility in Brazilian life very much surpasses 
its minute percentage. There are Jewish federations in 13 states 
of the country, but in some of those, such as Santa Catarina 
and Amazonas, there are only a few dozen families. In dozens 
of other cities, there are small organized communities. 

Colonial Period 

The presence of Portuguese New Christians began with the 
discovery, conquest, and colonization of the land that would 
become Brazil, then inhabited by many groups of indigenous 
peoples. In the colonial period (1500-1822), thousands of New 




Colonial period 

Modern period 
Agricultural settlement 
beginning of 20th century 



Bele 



em 




Belo Horizonte 

s, * Paraiba do Sul 

C*> V_,Sao PauloB* ■•Rio de Janeiro 
\ -*t y I ■ Sao Vicente 

/' \ Curitiba 

AQuatroIrmaos << 

^RGENTlNi^ / A m . ^ 

Philippson 'Porto Alegre . 

/ N ^ 



Map showing the main areas of Jewish settlement in Brazil. 



Christian Portuguese came to Brazil, but they never formed 
an organized Jewish community that expressed publicly what 
could be characterized as Judaism. 

Until the proclamation of independence in Brazil, in 
1822, Catholicism was the official religion and there was no 
freedom regarding the practice of other religions. The New 
Christians contributed to the establishment of the first villages, 
to the mercantilist state and church struggle against the Indi- 
ans, to the finance of and participation in the expeditions to 
the interior, and to cultivation of the land and of sugar cane, 
particularly in the mills of Bahia, Paraiba, Pernambuco, and 
other states. New Christians were also slave merchants, farm- 
ers, and craftsmen, among other occupations. They ascended 
socially and economically, but they were faced with the re- 
strictions on belonging to religious orders or holding political 
positions, such as the Irmandades de Misericordia and Cama- 
ras Municipals (city councils), plus marriage restrictions with 
Old Christians. Other groups such as Indians and black slaves 
also suffered from these restrictions. 

Some sources maintain that one New- Christian, Gaspar 
da Gama, was part of Pedro Alvares CabraPs fleet, in 1500. A 
significant number of Jews were involved in the sciences and 
the art of navigation in Portugal during the period of overseas 
expansion in the early 15 th century. During most of the colo- 
nial period, the Tribunal do Santo Oficio da Inquisicao (the 
Inquisition) was active in Brazil. Established in Portugal in 
1536, it operated in the Metropolis up to 1821. The conversion 
of non-Christians in the Americas (such as members of the in- 
digenous and pre-Columbian cultures) was a central colonial 
activity in the process of the expansion of the Portuguese and 
Spanish empires. After the first auto-da-fe, in 1540 in Portu- 
gal, the emigration of New Christians to the Brazilian colony 



142 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRAZIL 



grew, and many of them arrived in Bahia and other regions 
of the northeast with the first governors. 

The Inquisition did not settle permanently in colonial 
Brazil. From 1591, the Tribunal do Santo Oficio carried out sev- 
eral visitations to Brazil, powers were delegated to some bish- 
ops, as for instance the bishop of Bahia, and clergymen used 
to indict people for Jewish practices and send them for trial 
in Lisbon. The action of the Inquisition became more intense 
after the union between Portugal and Spain in 1580. 

The best-known action of the Inquisition against 
*Crypto-Jews in Brazil were the Visitations of 1591-93 in Ba- 
hia; 1593-95 m Pernambuco; 1618 in Bahia; around 1627 in the 
Southeast; and in 1763 and 1769 in Grao-Para, in the north of 
the country. In the 18 th century, the Inquisition was also active 
in Paraiba, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais. The Inquisition 
also condemned people accused of sexual deviations, witch- 
craft and slandering the Holy Church. 

In 1773, during the liberal government of Marques de 
Pombal, governor general of Brazil, the differentiation be- 
tween New Christians and Old Christians was abolished and 
the Inquisitional procedures came to an end. Consequently 
the New Christians were then integrated into society at large. 
The Inquisition in Brazil was less systematic and more infre- 
quent than its Portuguese counterpart, probably owing to 
the difficulty of controlling the colony, the fact that a perma- 
nent tribunal was never established in Brazil, and the greater 
permeability of the social and religious relations established 
in the Portuguese New World, which also allowed the New 
Christians to find alternative forms of social and economic 
advancement and often alternative ways to get around restric- 
tions, creating identity strategies to survive socially, includ- 
ing, in some cases, disguising New Christian traces. During 
the 17 th century, in Rio de Janeiro, episodes were recorded of 
Old Christians testifying in court in favor of New Christians 
belonging to the same social strata, proving that there were 
also forms of social intercourse coexisting with the system of 
Inquisitorial persecution. 

According to Arnold Wiznitzer, in the two and a half cen- 
turies of the Inquisition in Brazil, around 25,000 people were 
brought to trial by the Portuguese Inquisition, out of which 
1,500 were condemned to capital punishment. In Brazil, ap- 
proximately 400 judaizers were prosecuted, most of them 
being condemned to imprisonment, and 18 New Christians 
were condemned to death in Lisbon. Three New Christian 
writers stood out in the colonial period with works that re- 
veal elements of Jewish expression: Bento Teixeira, author of 
Prosopopeia - one of the most important colonial poems; Am- 
brosio Fernandes Brandao, author of Didlogos das Grandezas 
do Brasil (both in the 16 th century); and one of the best-known 
Portuguese playwrights, Antonio Jose da Silva, "the Jew," who 
lived part of his life in Portugal and part in Brazil, and was 
condemned to death by the Inquisition in 1739. 

The presence of New Christians in colonial Brazil has 
always been a controversial issue in both Brazilian and Por- 
tuguese historiography. Some historians believe that the in- 



terventions of the Inquisition Tribunal in Brazil, supported 
by the nobility and the Catholic clergy, were aimed at ex- 
propriating the New Christians* possessions and impeding 
the social ascension of a group with bourgeois aspirations. 
Therefore, the Inquisition created a myth regarding the origin 
and purity of blood, which discriminated against those with 
"infected blood," according to the Statutes on Blood Purity. 
Other historians see strictly religious and political reasons 
related to the history of the Portuguese Catholic Church and 
Portuguese Empire. 

Meanwhile, some historians maintain that Judaism or 
Crypto-Judaism was "fabricated" during the Inquisitional 
processes (that is, by means of intimidating, indicting, men- 
acing, and torturing, the Inquisition "created" Judaism or 
Crypto-Judaism in order to justify its own existence and le- 
gitimacy). Others maintain that New Christians deliberately 
and furtively professed Judaic or Crypto-Judaic traditions in- 
herited from their ancestors, even though in the 18 th century 
the Inquisition condemned New Christians as such, that is, 
as descendants of Jews rather than Judaizers, which would 
show a more definite anti-Judaism on the part of the persecu- 
tors. The debate includes the manner in which to read docu- 
ments of the Inquisition, the main source for these studies, 
and in what measure they can constitute a trustworthy source 
from the point of view of the Jewish way of life of each per- 
son prosecuted. This debate assumes different forms when it 
relates to the 16 th or the 18 th centuries, since in the 1700s the 
New Christians were evidently much more distant from their 
Jewish origins. There was also a regional variation in Brazil 
that needs to be taken into account. According to Anita No- 
vinsky, the New Christian was a "split human being," socially 
and existentially, with a differentiated identity in the colonial 
Portuguese- Brazilian world. 

The anti- Jewish attitude found in the Inquisitions proce- 
dures did not lead to disseminating hatred against Jews among 
the population in Brazil, although the imaginary extension of 
the Inquisition and the terror it implied can hardly be assessed 
and there are traces in the country of a Catholic popular imag- 
ery, which - although it has never triggered any form of per- 
secution in modern history - does have a relatively medieval 
vision of the Jews and Judaism. 

There is no actual link between the history of New Chris- 
tians and contemporary 20 th century Jewish history. Never- 
theless, the remote (and secret) Jewish origin of many tradi- 
tional Catholic Portuguese has been recently acknowledged 
by the traditional families of the country through genealogi- 
cal research, and the presence of the Jews, or "Semites," has 
been brought to light in the historical studies of the country. 
Equally, the theme and memory of the New Christians have 
been exaggerated by the Jewish communities in Brazil, which 
tend to consider erroneously all the New Christians as secret 
Jews, exaggerating the Jewish colonial heritage of the coun- 
try. This memory often transcends the boundary which sepa- 
rates the New Christians* lives in the colonial period and the 
establishment of modern Jewish communities in Brazil, as if 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



143 



BRAZIL 



we were dealing with - and this is not the case - a continuous 
and identical historical line, which began with the conquest 
of Brazil by the Portuguese in 1500. 

dutch domain. The first organized Jewish community in 
Brazil was established in Recife, Pernambuco, in the north- 
east, during a brief period of Dutch colonial occupation in the 
17 th century, which permitted religious freedom, and legally 
defended Jews and New Christians from the restrictions im- 
posed by Portugal. The estimates of the Jewish population at 
Recife vary considerably. According to Wiznizter, it reached 
1,450 members in 1645. Egon and Frieda Wolff's research 
found around 350 Jews. 

From the end of the 16 th century, Amsterdam became 
an important Jewish religious, cultural, and economic center, 
formed mainly by New Christians of Portuguese origin who 
returned to Judaism. When the West India Company, aided 
by the Dutch government, equipped an expedition to Brazil, 
some Dutch Jews joined the expedition. In May 1624 two im- 
portant forts in Bahia were captured by the Dutch; but a large 
Portuguese and Spanish expeditionary force arrived shortly 
afterwards, and two months later, the Dutch had to surrender 
(May 1625). The West India Company soon prepared another 
expedition, this time to Pernambuco. The States General at 
The Hague proclaimed that the liberty of Spaniards, Portu- 
guese, and natives, whether Roman Catholics or Jews, would 
be respected. Jewish soldiers, traders, and adventurers joined 
the expedition that successfully landed at the ports of Olinda 
and Recife in the middle of May 1630. 

Johan Maurits van Nassau, who was appointed governor- 
general of Brazil in 1637, gave the non-Christian inhabitants 
of Dutch Brazil a sense of security. In 1636 the Jews founded 
the first Brazilian synagogue in Recife, the first on American 
soil: Kahal Kadosh Zur Israel. Later they founded the syna- 
gogue Kahal Kadosh Magen Abraham in Mauricia. There are 
records of a prayer house in Paraiba. The Jewish community 
was very well organized along the same lines as the mother 
community in Amsterdam. All Jewish residents were members 
of the community and were subject to its regulations, taxes, 
and assessments. The Jewish cemetery was located in the hin- 
terland, separated from Recife and Mauricia by the Capibaribe 
River. Jews from Recife addressed an inquiry regarding the 
proper season to recite the prayers for rain to Rabbi Hayyim 
Shabbetai in Salonika, the earliest American contribution to 
the rabbinic *responsa literature. 

By 1639 Dutch Brazil had a flourishing sugar industry 
with 166 sugar cane mills, six of which were owned by Jews. 
Jews also had an important role in tax farming, were engaged 
in the slave trade, and were also very active in commerce, and 
all these opportunities attracted many Jews to Dutch Brazil. 
In 1638 a group of 200 Jews, led by Manoel Mendes de Cas- 
tro, arrived on two ships. Soon after, the Jews of Recife needed 
rabbis, Hebrew teachers, and hazzanim and thus invited the 
famous Rabbi Isaac Aboab da *Fonseca, one of the four rab- 
bis of the Talmud Torah congregation in Amsterdam, and the 



scholar Moses Raphael *d'Aguilar to come to Brazil as their 
spiritual leaders. A young Jew by the name of Isaac de ^Cas- 
tro, who had come to Bahia - then under Portuguese rule - 
from Amsterdam via Dutch Brazil, was arrested for teaching 
Jewish rites and customs to the New Christians. He was ex- 
tradited to Lisbon and was one of the victims of the auto-da- 
fe on Dec. 15, 1647. 

Jews were enrolled into the militia; one of the four com- 
panies was composed entirely of Jews and was exempt from 
guard duty on Saturdays. As early as 1642 the Portuguese be- 
gan preparations for the liberation of northeastern Brazil. In 
1645 they began a war that lasted nine years. Jews joined the 
Dutch ranks, and some were killed in action. Scores of people 
died of malnutrition. Famine had set in and conditions were 
desperate when, on June 26, 1649, two ships arrived from Hol- 
land with food. On that occasion, R. Isaac Aboab wrote the 
first Hebrew poem in the Americas, "Zekher Asiti le-Niflebt 
El" ("I Have Set a Memorial to Gods Miracles"). Soon after- 
wards other ships arrived with 2,000 soldiers and more sup- 
plies. The war continued, and some Jews taken prisoner by 
the enemy were sentenced and hanged as traitors; others were 
sent to Lisbon for trial. The war ended with the defeat and ca- 
pitulation of the Dutch in January 1654. Even though during 
the war many Jews died and many returned to Holland, in 
1650 there were still about 650 Jews in Recife and Mauricia. 
It was stipulated in the capitulation protocol of January 26, 
1654, that all Jews, like the Dutch, were to leave Brazil within 
three months and had the right to liquidate their assets and 
to take all their movable property with them. The majority 
left for Amsterdam, but some sailed to the Caribbean Islands 
(*Curacao, ^Barbados, etc.). Wiznitzer maintains that a group 
of 23 Brazilian Jews arrived in New Amsterdam (old name of 
New York), then under Dutch rule, on the Saint Catherine at 
the beginning of September 1654 and they were the founding 
fathers of the first Jewish community in New York. Egon and 
Frieda Wolff reject this historical connection and argue that 
there is no documentary basis to assume that the Jews who 
arrived in New York were the same who had left Recife dur- 
ing the expulsion of the Dutch. 

Independent Brazil 

Two years after Brazil declared its independence from Portu- 
gal (1822) it adopted its first constitution. Roman Catholicism 
remained the state religion, but the constitution proclaimed 
some tolerance of other religions. After the proclamation of 
independence from Portugal and during the period of mon- 
archy in Brazilian history (1822-89), Brazil had two emper- 
ors, Dom Pedro 1 and Dom Pedro 11. The latter was interested 
in Judaism, was a Hebraist, and maintained correspondence 
with illustrious Jews of his time and had visited the Holy Land 
during one of his international voyages. 

The second organized Jewish community in Brazilian 
history, in modern times, was founded in Belem, capital of 
the State of Para, in the north, in 1840, made up of Jews who 
had come from Morocco. The immigrants were attracted by 



144 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 4 



BRAZIL 



the wealth derived from the rubber economy. They established 
the first modern synagogue in the country, Eshel Abraham, in 
1823, and around 1826 the second one, Shaar Hash am aim. The 
first synagogue followed the rites of Tanger and Tetuan (which 
later became part of Spanish Morocco), and Shaar Hashamaim 
followed the rites of Arab Morocco (later under French colo- 
nial rule, Algeria, and other parts of North Africa. In 1842 a 
Jewish cemetery was founded in the same city. Revival of the 
rubber industry between the end of the 19 th century and the 
beginning of the 20 th attracted more immigrants. Immigrants 
from Morocco formed small communities in other places in 
northern Brazil. There were also small Moroccan nuclei in the 
Amazonas, another northern state, attracted by the wealth of 
the rubber industry, in places such as Itacoatiara, Cameta, 
Paratintins, Obidos, Santarem, Humaita, and others. Most 
of these Jews mixed with the local population, giving origin 
to many local legends mixing Judaism and Catholicism. By 
World War 1, Belems Sephardi community, of Moroccan ori- 
gin, had about 800 people. 

Early Modern Period 

Contemporary Jewish Brazilian history started in the last 
quarter of the 19 th century, when a few hundred Jewish immi- 
grants arrived from both Eastern and Central Europe, mainly 
from the Alsace-Loraine region, settling in some of the main 
cities in the country, principally Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. 
It was not an organized and systematic immigration flow, but 
one which occurred rather on an individual basis. These first 
immigrants did not organize a Jewish community in Brazil. 
The new constitution adopted by Brazil in 1891, after the coun- 
try became a republic in 1889, abolished all traces of religious 
discrimination, ensured the civil rights of all citizens, and pro- 
vided for the introduction of civil marriage and the establish- 
ment of nonsectarian municipal cemeteries. The principles of 
freedom of conscience and religion and equality before the 
law have been retained in all the constitutions subsequently 
adopted by Brazil - in 1934, 1937, 1946, and 1967. 

agricultural settlement. The earliest discussion of a 
plan for the agricultural settlement of Jews took place in 1891, 
when the Deutsches Central Committee fuer die Russischen 
Juden, established after the expulsion of Jews from Moscow, 
sent Oswald Boxer - a Viennese journalist and close friend 
of Theodor Herzl - to Brazil to investigate the possibilities of 
founding agricultural settlements for Russian refugees. Boxer 
was warmly received by government representatives and after 
an inspection tour he reported to the committee that Jewish 
settlement could indeed prosper in Brazil and that the first 
settlers could be dispatched as early as March 1892. The revo- 
lution of November 3, 1891, and the counterrevolution of No- 
vember 23, which ended the rule of General Deodoro da Fon- 
seca, invalidated Boxer s forecast, and the project was finally 
abandoned in 1892, when Boxer died of yellow fever. In 1901, 
on the initiative of the vice president of the ^Jewish Coloni- 
zation Association (ica), who had contacts with the Belgian 
railway company in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil again became 



the objective of Jewish agricultural settlement. The continuing 
stagnation in the agricultural colonies of Argentina prompted 
ica to seek new land where the expenses of agricultural settle- 
ment would be lower than in Argentina. 

The first organized immigration and the first Jewish 
communities in contemporary Brazil settled in the State of 
Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil, which 
borders on Argentina and Uruguay. Through the Jewish Col- 
onization Association and by means of agreements with the 
state government, hundreds of immigrants from Eastern Eu- 
rope settled in agricultural colonies, following the example of 
similar colonies established in Argentina from 1893. 

The first colony in Brazil, with an area of 4,472 hectares, 
was Philippson, in the region of Santa Maria, in 1904, consist- 
ing of 37 families (267 persons) from Bessarabia. The first Jew- 
ish school in Brazil was founded in Philippson in 1906, where 
the official curriculum was taught. In 1908, the colony had 299 
inhabitants. The meager chances of economic success in the 
settlement, contrasted with the prospect of more comfortable 
livelihoods as peddlers or artisans in Santa Maria soon led to 
the settlements disintegration. In August 1926 the director of 
ica in Buenos Aires reported that of the 122 families who set- 
tled in Philippson at various periods, only 17 remained. 

In 1912 Quatro Irmaos was established, with over 350 
families divided into four nuclei: Quatro Irmaos, Baroneza 
Clara, Barao Hirsch, and Rio Padre. The first colonists came 
from Argentina and Bessarabia. In each of the nuclei a school 
functioned, teaching both the official and the Jewish curri- 
cula. In 1915 the population in Quatro Irmaos reached 1,600 
people. 

The colonists also cleared fertile areas of forest and groves 
(mato) y which were enriched by the wood ash created by 
burning the vegetation. The salvaged wood was sold to icas 
sawmills in the area, and, in order to facilitate transportation 
and marketing, ica began building an 18-kilometer railroad 
that joined Quatro Irmaos and the town of Erebango early in 
1918. Flour mills and a consumer cooperative organization 
were also established, and in 1912 a school was built and cul- 
tural life began to develop. 

In 1924 Rabbi Isaiah Raffalovich arrived in Brazil as a 
representative of ica. He played a decisive role in the develop- 
ment of the Jewish presence in the country and tried, unsuc- 
cessfully, to organize in Brazil a unified community, inspired 
by kehillah principles. 

In the 1920s the majority of the colonists moved to Porto 
Alegre and other cities in the hinterland of Rio Grande do 
Sul, such as Erebango, Pelotas, Cruz Alta, Passo Fundo, Santa 
Maria, and Erechim, establishing communities in each one 
of these cities. 

Some of the factors that made the immigrants abandon 
the colonies were the precarious quality of the land; lack of 
credit; isolation of the immigrants; lack of agricultural experi- 
ence; commercial and industrial interests associated with ica 
(such as the railroads) which exploited the Jewish colonists; 
lack of government support, plus a military uprising that oc- 



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BRAZIL 



curred in Rio Grande do Sul in 1923 and devastated the region, 
as the colonies were situated along the strategic railroads. 

From the 1920s, ica began to concentrate its immigra- 
tion efforts on the cities. In 1935, with ica's support another 
small agricultural colony was established in Rezende, in the 
State of Rio de Janeiro. The colony was planned to be also a 
haven for some German Jewish refugee families who had pre- 
vious agricultural experience, but they were unable to obtain 
entry visas because of the restrictions on Jewish immigration 
during the Vargas regime after 1937. Another attempt at ne- 
gotiations by ica, to bring some Polish families in 1939, simi- 
larly failed. The last families of the colony of Rezende left for 
urban regions in 1939. 

URBAN IMMIGRATION AND THE NATIONAL BASIS OF JEW- 
ISH life. From World War 1 and through the 1920s and 1930s 
Jewish immigrants from Eastern and Western Europe and the 
Middle East formed well-structured communities in the main 
cities of the country, such as Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto 
Alegre, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Recife, and Salvador (as well 
as Belem, where a community settled in the 19 th century). This 
process occurred during the so-called "Old Republic" or "First 
Republic" (1889-1930) in the history of Brazil. Jewish immi- 
gration to Brazil counted on the direct organization and sup- 
port of international Jewish assistance organizations, mainly 
ica, Joint, Emigdirect, and hi as. In many cases these organi- 
zations put pressure on local Jewish groups so as to welcome 
more immigrants trying to flee from Eastern Europe. Small 
settlements were also established in dozens of cities in the in- 
terior of Brazil, following the main economic possibilities of 
the country. In the State of Sao Paulo, some small communi- 
ties settled alongside the railroad that transported coffee, the 
main product of the country up to 1929. They settled in places 
such as Santos, Campinas, Santo Andre, Ribeirao Preto, Pi- 
racicaba, Taubate, Sao Carlos, Sorocaba, Mogi das Cruzes, and 
Sao Jose dos Campos. 

By World War 1, Brazil had a Jewish population of be- 
tween 5,000 and 7,000 persons. After World War 1 there was 
a marked increase in Jewish immigration, and in the 1920s, 
28,820 Jews entered the country, mostly from Eastern Europe. 
In the 1930s, the number of Jewish immigrants increased to 
approximately 56,000. According to official statistics, the Jew- 
ish population per state was as follows: 



State 


1900 


1940 


1950 


Sao Paulo 


226 


20,379 


26,443 


Rio de Janeiro 


25 


22,393 


33,270 


Rio Grande Do Sul 


54 


6,619 


8,048 


Bahia 


17 


955 


1,076 


Parana 


17 


1,033 


1,340 


Minas Gerais 


37 


1,431 


1,528 



In Pernambuco, in 1920 there were around 150 families. 

Several factors contributed to a successful process of 

settlement and social, cultural, and economic integration of 



Jews into contemporary Brazilian society from 1910. Since the 
end of the 19 th century, and particularly after the abolition of 
slavery in 1888, Brazil has become a "country of immigrants," 
with religious tolerance and intense social and cultural per- 
meability, which was not hindered by the manifestations of 
prejudice and racism. From the 1880s to the 1940s, Brazil wel- 
comed about 4 million immigrants (65,000 of them - up to 
1942 - were Jews). Mostly, immigration came from Italy, Por- 
tugal, Spain, and Japan, but also from Germany, Syria, Leba- 
non, Turkey, Russia, Lithuania, Poland, and other countries. 
These immigrants, with their dynamic cultural, social, and 
economic drive, played a decisive role in the development of 
the country and left their mark on the urban culture wher- 
ever they settled, such as in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and 
Porto Alegre. 

As well as allowing religious freedom, Brazilian legis- 
lation was tolerant towards European immigrants and they 
could always find loopholes that allowed more immigrants to 
enter the country, despite legal bureaucracy and the need for 
"cartas de chamada" (call letters). It was not any different for 
Jewish immigrants; this was the open social environment full 
of economic opportunities that successive migratory waves 
met, at least until the 1930s. From the 1920s on, Brazil became 
a desirable and viable destination due to the restrictions and 
quotas imposed by the United States, Canada, and Argentina. 
In the 1920s, over 10% of all Jews who emigrated from Europe 
had chosen Brazil as their destination, and between 1920 and 
1930 about half of the immigrants from Eastern Europe who 
arrived in Brazil were Jewish. Only very traditional state circles 
such as diplomats and the military were not always receptive 
to the presence of the Jews, but this did not hinder the devel- 
opment of Jewish life in the country by any means. Between 
1920 and 1940, immigrants took advantage of the high rates 
of economic growth and urbanization in Brazil, as well as the 
commercial and industrial opportunities available. The com- 
bination of religious and political freedom, solid community 
ties, and the individual dream of "making it in America," pro- 
duced a social and economic dynamism that allowed for in- 
dividual and collective social integration and the progress of 
immigrant communities. 

Many of the early Jewish settlers became itinerant ped- 
dlers (klientelchik), except for a small group of immigrants 
who worked as artisans. In the course of time, however, this 
situation underwent a change. The Jewish tradesmen who 
settled in the country after World War 1 soon became manu- 
facturers and industrial pioneers in their fields - especially in 
textiles, readymade clothes, furniture, and at a later period, 
construction. An outstanding example of industrial pioneers 
is the *Klabin family, leaders in paper manufacturing and re- 
lated industries. 

community life and social organizations. The orga- 
nization of the community was a decisive factor for successful 
integration. Wherever large groups of immigrants settled, as 
for instance in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre, Salva- 



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dor, Recife, Belo Horizonte, Belem, and other cities, there was 
always at least one or more charitable organization, a credit 
cooperative, and one or more schools, which provided immi- 
grant children with good social and educational opportunities. 
In 1917, the first Congresso Israelita no Brasil took place. 

The first charitable society, Achiezer, was founded in Rio 
de Janeiro in 1912. The Sociedade Beneficente Israelita, Relief, 
was founded in 1920. Three years later the Froien Farain and 
the Lar da Crian^a Israelita (children's home) were founded. 
The Policlinica Israelita was established in 1937, later becom- 
ing the Hospital Israelita. In Rio de Janeiro, the Sociedade das 
Damas would later found the Lar da Velhice (old age home), 
in 1963. Also, a credit cooperative was founded in that city, 
which was Brazil's capital until i960 (when it was transferred 
to Brasilia). 

In Sao Paulo, between the years 1920 and 1940 there 
were 10 charitable entities in the community which offered 
all the necessary support to the newly arrived immigrants, 
from welcome at the port, assistance to pregnant women, and 
loans to set up a small business. Some of these organizations 
were run by individuals and families who had arrived some 
time before and had already prospered and did not want to 
see their brethren having to beg in the streets or looking like 
poor immigrants. The Sociedade Beneficente Amigos dos Po- 
bres Ezra was established in 1915, in Sao Paulo, followed by the 
Sociedade Beneficente das Damas Israelitas a year later. The 
Policlinica Linath Hatzedek was established in 1929, and later 
the Gota de Leite of B'nai B'rith, the Lar das Crianc^as da cip, 
the Lar das Criancas das Damas Israelitas, the Organizac^ao 
Feminina de Assistencia Social (Ofidas, 1940), and the Asilo 
dos Velhos (1941). Between 1936 and 1966 the Sanatorio Ezra 
for tuberculosis patients operated in Sao Jose dos Campos (50 
miles from Sao Paulo). It had 120 beds, taking care of Jewish 
people from about 30 cities from all over Brazil. In 1928 the 
Cooperativa de Credito Popular of the Bom Retiro neighbor- 
hood was established. 

Even though the Bom Retiro neighborhood of Sao Paulo 
concentrated the main nucleus of immigrants coming from 
Eastern Europe, there were also small communities scattered 
throughout the city, and the groups from Western Europe, the 
Germans, and the Sephardim basically kept themselves apart, 
maintaining contact only from time to time. Each group had 
its own burial society, but the cemetery was common to all. 
In Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro there were common insti- 
tutions from the beginning of the immigration. 

Community life also developed in and around the syn- 
agogue, social, sporting and cultural clubs, political move- 
ments, and the active press. In Rio de Janeiro, Uniao Israelita 
do Brasil was founded in 1873 and the first synagogue, Cen- 
tro Israelita, opened in 1910. The first Jewish institution to be 
opened in Sao Paulo was the Kahal Israel synagogue (1912). In 
Sao Paulo, the Sephardim from Lebanon and Syria founded 
two synagogues in the Mooca neighborhood in the 1920s. The 
German Jews (as well as Italian and Austrian Jews) established 
the Congregacao Israelita Paulista in Sao Paulo (1936) and the 



Associa^ao Religiosa Israelita (1942) in Rio de Janeiro. Both 
were liberal congregations. 

In Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul, the local 
Uniao Israelita was founded in 1909 by Ashkenazi and Se- 
phardi immigrants together. Sephardim founded the Centro 
Hebraico Rio-Grandense in 1922. Sibra (Sociedade Israelita 
Brasileira de Cultura e Beneficencia) was created in 1936. In 
the interior of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, small comu- 
nities were formed in Santa Maria (1915), Pelotas (Uniao Is- 
raelita Pelotense, 1920), and Rio Grande (Sociedade Israelita 
Brasileira, 1920, with many immigrants from the agricultural 
colony of Philipson), Passo Fundo (Uniao Israelita Passo-Fun- 
dense, 1922), and Erechim (1934, Sociedade Cultural e Benefi- 
cente Israelita, with many immigrants from Quatro Irmaos). 

In Salvador, capital of Bahia, a synagogue opened in a 
private household in 1924. Jewish immigrants from Eastern 
Europe began to arrive in Recife, capital of Pernambuco, in 
the 1910s and in the same year a skill in a private house was 
created. In 1918 Centro Israelita de Pernambuco and an Idiche 
Schul were founded, followed by the cemetery (1927), the Syn- 
agoga Israelita da Boa Vista (1927), and a cooperative (1931). 
In the 1930s Sephardim built their synagogue in Recife. The 
community at Recife had a very active Jewish life, with five 
schools, a library, a theater group, youth movements, and 
Zionist women's organizations (wizo and Naamat). 

In Curitiba, capital of Parana, Uniao Israelita do Parana 
was founded in 1913 and later became Centro Israelita do 
Parana (1920). The cemetery was built in 1925 and the local 
community reached around 3.500 Jews. 

In Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, and Recife the 
Jews concentrated in specific neighborhoods: in Bom Retiro, 
Bonfim, and Prac^a Onze, respectively, in the first three cities 
and in Boa Viagem and Boa Vista in Recife. Eliezer Levin is 
the main chronicler of Jewish life in Bom Retiro and the writer 
Moacyr *Scliar wrote several novels set in the little shtetl of Rio 
Grande do Sul. In Rio de Janeiro, the main writer of memoirs 
from Prac^a Onze (also the heart of the Rio de Janeiro carni- 
val) is Samuel Malamud. In these four large Brazilian cities, 
a defined Jewish urban space existed, with its stories, both 
real and imaginary, its meeting places, bars, restaurants, and 
lively folklore. 

Women prostitutes were exploited by the international 
Tzvi Migdal traffic network based in Buenos Aires from the 
end of the 19 th century and segregated by the community. They 
founded the Associa^ao Beneficente Funeraria e Religiosa Is- 
raelita (1906 to 1968) in Rio de Janeiro, and the Sociedade Re- 
ligiosa e Beneficente Israelita in Sao Paulo (1924 to 1968), with 
their own mutual-aid organizations. They maintained sepa- 
rate cemeteries in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Cubatao (a 
neighboring city of Santos) and a synagogue in Rio. Within 
the Jewish communities themselves, the traffickers sponsored 
the Yiddish theater. The existence of Tzvi Migdal was an issue 
that made newspaper headlines in the 1930s and served as a 
pretext for those who wanted to ban Jewish immigration. But 
the history of the Jewish prostitutes or polacas (Poles), as they 



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BRAZIL 



were known, entered the social and cultural imagination of the 
two most important Brazilian cities, even though Jews were 
only a minority among the women prostitutes. These stories 
can be found in the novel Macunaima by Mario de Andrade, 
the founder of Brazilian Modernism, and they were also the 
subjects of paintings and songs by popular artists and musi- 
cians. The subject, already a strong taboo in the community, 
became the theme of a novel (O Ciclo das Aguas) by the Bra- 
zilian Jewish writer Moacyr Scliar. 

education and culture. Jewish communities all around 
Brazil maintained schools in the most important cities where 
they settled. In 1929, there were 25 schools in the country, 
with about 1,600 students. In Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and 
Salvador there was an ideological plurality of schools divid- 
ing Zionists, who taught Hebrew, and Yiddishists, who taught 
Yiddish. In Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Recife there was a 
Jewish theater. 

The Dr. Weizmann school was established in Belem, 
Para State, in 1919. The Maguen David School was founded 
in Rio de Janeiro in 1920, later renamed the Colegio He- 
breu-Brasileiro. In Sao Paulo, a small talmud torah, a "heder," 
opened in 1916. The first school in Sao Paulo was the Ginasio 
Hebraico-Brasileiro Renascence (1924). Renascence and tal- 
mud torah (1932) schools started to incorporate Jewish teach- 
ing with the Brazilian official curriculum, resulting in an im- 
portant form of social integration for the children and young 
people. In Sao Paulo, a small school linked to the Bund existed 
in the 1930s and leftist sectors founded the Yiddishist Scholem 
Aleichem school in the 1940s. Other schools were C.N. Bialik 
and I.L. Peretz and the religious Beit Chinuch. 

The Escola Israelita Jacob Dinezon of leftist and Yid- 
dishist orientation was founded in Salvador in 1924. During 
the 1930s, a second school was founded - Ber Borochov, of 
Zionist orientation. Jewish schools were founded in Belo Hori- 
zonte (1928) and in Curitiba (1935). There were also schools in 
Nilopolis, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro State, and in Santos, 
interior of Sao Paulo. 

The Jewish press in Yiddish was very active until the 
1960s and there was an active Jewish press in Portuguese un- 
til the 1990s, when the remaining newspapers and magazines 
were confined to a limited Jewish public. 

The first Jewish newspaper in Yiddish in Brazil was Di 
Menscheit, published in 1915 in Porto Alegre. The press re- 
flected the ideological diversity, embracing left-wing and 
Zionist newspapers. Later came Kol Yisrael (1919) and Dos 
Idishe Vochenblat (1923), later to be called Brazilianer Yid- 
dishe Presse (1927). Other Yiddish newspapers were Di Yidishe 
Folkstsaytung, Yidishe Tsaytung and Der Nayer Moment. 

The first Jewish newspaper published in Portuguese was 
A Columna, in 1916. In 1933-39 Sao Paulo also had a Portu- 
guese-language newspaper, A Civilizacao. Newspaper and 
magazines edited in Portuguese were Cronica Israelita, Semana 
Judaica (both linked to cip in Sao Paulo), Aonde Vamos?, Sha- 
lom, O Reflexo, Revista Brasil-Israel, Encontro, and Boletim da 



Associacao Sholem Aleichem in Rio de Janeiro. Many institu- 
tions had their own publication or newsletter. 

Zionism and political participation. The large immi- 
gration of the 1920s consisted of Jews of different political po- 
sitions and the whole spectrum of ideological orientation. All 
the Zionist parties were represented among Brazilian Jewry, 
and they left their mark upon the community. As a result, 
communal social Jewish life was greatly enriched. The first 
Congresso Sionista in Brazil took place in 1922, bringing to- 
gether four movements - Ahavat Sion (Sao Paulo), Tiferet Sion 
(Rio de Janeiro, established in 1919), Shalom Sion (Curitiba), 
and Ahavat Sion (Para) - founding the Federa^ao Sionista do 
Brazil. One year before, in 1921, a Brazilian representative took 
part in the 12 th Zionist Congress in Carlsbad. In the 1929 elec- 
tion to choose the Brazilian representative to the 16 th Zionist 
Congress a total of 1,260 votes were cast, and for the Congress 
of 1934 the total number of votes was 2,647. The Zionist move- 
ment was very active within the Jewish communities, from 
Belem (Para) to Rio de Janeiro, and in 1929, in Rio de Janeiro, 
Zionists assembled and marched through the streets in a pub- 
lic demonstration in which 1,500 people participated. 

From the year 1930 Zionist youth movements were ac- 
tive mainly in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre: 
Hashomer Hatzair, Ichud Habonim, Dror, Gordonia and also 
the Scout movement Avanhandava. In the 1960s, Chazit Ha- 
noar and Netzach were also active. 

The leftist movements were also quite significant. The 
movement of left-wing Jews in Rio de Janeiro was connected 
with the Sholem Aleichem Library, Brazkcor, the Sociedade 
Brasileira Pro-Colonizac^ao Judaica in the Soviet Union, and 
the Centro Operario Morris Vinchevsky (the last two were es- 
tablished in 1928, ran a Jewish workers school, and edited the 
periodical Der Unhoib). In Sao Paulo there were the groups 
Cultura and Progresso, as well as a small nucleus of Bund and 
later, in 1954, the Instituto Cultural Israelita Brasileiro (icib), 
the pro-Communist Casa do Povo (Peoples House), together 
with Teatro de Arte Israelita Brasileiro (taib) and the Es- 
cola Sholem Aleichem. Yiddish language and culture were 
key factors within these movements. The Jews were leaders 
in the Partido Comunista Brasileiro. In other communities, 
such as Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, and Salvador, there 
were also left-wing nuclei, comprising left-wing Zionists and 
Communists. 

the jews under getulio vargas. In the 1920s and 1930s, 
having settled in a few cities and because of their economic, 
social, and cultural activities, the Jews became one of the 
"most visible" groups of immigrants in the words of the histo- 
rian Jeffrey H. Lesser. Thus, they came to be the object of local, 
national, and international gambling interests, of stereotypes, 
and of political intrigue, "pawns of the powerful," especially 
during the Vargas regime (1930-45), when "the Jewish ques- 
tion" was raised in the country, involving political interests. 
In 1930 the "First Republic" came to an end and a revolu- 
tion brought Getulio Vargas to power with a nationalist gov- 



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BRAZIL 



ernment that overcame the supremacy of the rural oligarchies 
of the States of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, which had domi- 
nated the country since 1889. Brazil began to industrialize and 
define the urban middle classes in the large cities. In the year 
1937, Getulio Vargas, who had already governed since 1930, 
decreed the dictatorship of the "Estado-Novo" (New State). 
This was a turning point in Brazils immigration policy, which 
became increasingly restrictive and had an adverse effect on 
the immigration of Jews. In 1934 the tendency to select im- 
migrants on the basis of their ethnic origin came to the fore, 
and afterwards it was taken to the extreme when a secret order 
was circulated through the Brazilian consulates abroad to re- 
ject all visa applications submitted by Jews. Both the 1934 and 
1937 constitutions and a decree issued in 1938 provided for a 
quota system of immigration that was not to exceed 2% (an- 
nually) of the total number of immigrants from any particu- 
lar country in the period 1884-1934 and was to consist of up 
to 80% agricultural laborers. The Estado-Novo military coup 
was orchestrated by Vargas on the pretext that a plan for a 
Communist revolution was underway. This plan received the 
(Jewish) name "Plan Cohen." 

Nevertheless, Jewish immigration, mainly from Nazi- 
dominated Europe, continued individually by a variety of 
means, mainly case by case negotiations, but never organized 
through charitable organizations. From time to time, special 
provisions were made for the immigration of people skilled 
in certain fields or relatives of Brazilian citizens. The law also 
made it possible for the authorities to accord to tourists the 
status of permanent residents. Some 17,500 Jews entered Bra- 
zil between 1933 and 1939 (until 1945 an additional 6,000 en- 
tered), but many refugees from occupied Europe had their 
visa applications denied. During this time, some diplomats 
tried to act sympathetically towards the Jews; among them 
were Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas and Aracy Carvalho de 
Guimaraes Rosa. 

During the years of the Estado-Novo (1937-1945) and 
World War 11, a general climate of xenophobia was pres- 
ent in government circles and in sectors of the political elite 
and among intellectuals. At least two militant Jewish Com- 
munist women were deported by Vargas* political police to 
Germany and handed over to the Gestapo: Jenny Gleizer and 
Olga Benario, wife of Luis Carlos Prestes, the most important 
Brazilian Communist leader, having led a Communist revolt 
in the country in 1935. The teaching of foreign languages and 
publication of newspapers in foreign languages were prohib- 
ited and immigrant organizations had to "nationalize" their 
names and to elect boards of directors with native-born Bra- 
zilians. As a rule, these restrictions were imposed on all im- 
migrant groups and not exclusively on Jewish immigrants, af- 
fecting the Italians and hitting the Japanese hard (who were 
deported from Sao Paulo and Santos to the interior of the 
state). 

Despite the dictatorship and the climate of nationalistic 
xenophobia, the Jewish organizations adjusted to the legis- 
lation and learned how to deal with the restrictions so as to 



continue operating. The schools continued to teach Hebrew 
and Jewish culture, the synagogues kept up their services, ra- 
dio programs played Jewish music, and innumerable organi- 
zations were established during this period (including the As- 
sociacao Religiosa Israelita - ari, founded by German Jewish 
refugees in 1942 in Rio de Janeiro, with around 1,000 mem- 
bers) resulting in a very fertile period for the organizations of 
the Jewish community. The German Jews were the ones who 
became most alarmed, especially after Brazil broke off rela- 
tions with Germany and Italy in 1942, but their organizations 
operated as usual during the war years. 

During the Estado-Novo and especially in the war years, 
there are no records of any forcible closure of Jewish organi- 
zations in Sao Paulo, then the biggest Jewish community. The 
antisemitism which was present in governmental and intel- 
lectual circles, among diplomats and the elite, did not result 
in criminal actions against the Jews living in Brazil and those 
who managed to evade the immigration barriers. Daily Jewish 
life followed its normal course, in spite of the restrictions in 
immigration and the antisemitic rhetoric in official circles. 

In Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro the communities took 
part in campaigns in support of the war effort by Brazil, which 
broke off relations with the Axis powers in August of 1942 and 
followed a policy of alignment with the United States and the 
Allies. The Jewish community of Brazil donated five airplanes 
to the newly created Brazilian Air Force, in 1942, and formed 
several committees to help refugees of the war in Europe, some 
of which were linked to the Red Cross. In July 1944 Brazil sent 
the Forca Expedicionaria Brasileira (feb) to Italy, consisting of 
over 30,000 men, who fought together with the U.S. Army in 
Northern Italy, participating in the victorious battle of Monte 
Castello. Jews were part of the feb. Among them were the art- 
ist Carlos Scliar, who later published an Album de Guerra (Al- 
bum of War), and Boris Schnaiderman, who published Guerra 
em Surdina, an eyewitness novel about the feb. 

Also during the war, several campaigns were undertaken 
to help the refugees in Europe. With the restriction on im- 
ports and the naval blockade, there was significant industrial 
and technical development in the great urban centers, in or- 
der to supply goods that had previously been imported. This 
created jobs for the inhabitants of the cities, among them the 
Jewish immigrants who had technical, commercial, and in- 
dustrial skills. 

Between 1933 and 1938 the Ac^ao Brasileira Integralista 
(aib) Fascist movement was active in Brazil, led by Plinio 
Salgado, Gustavo Barroso, and Miguel Reale. Inspired by 
European and South American Fascism, Integralismo had an 
antisemitic platform. Gustavo Barroso, the head of the mili- 
tia, was the main antisemitic spokesman. He translated into 
Portuguese The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and published 
adaptations of the book for the Brazilian public, such as A 
Sinagoga Paulista; Brasil, colonia de banqueiros; Historia se- 
er eta do Brasily and others. Gustavo Barroso ran the column 
"International Judaism" in the main Integralist newspaper. 
He was also the author of about 80 books, a member and 



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BRAZIL 



president of the Academia Brasileira de Letras, and an intel- 
lectual respected throughout the country, and can be consid- 
ered the most active antisemitic activist in modern Brazilian 
history. However, there is no documented evidence of open 
violence against Jewish communities, who reacted when nec- 
essary. No Jewish organization stopped functioning because 
of the antisemitic propaganda spread by aib. In Curitiba, Ba- 
ruch Schulman wrote Em Legitima Defesa y in 1937, a publica- 
tion in defense of the Jews, and in Belo Horizonte the histo- 
rian Isaias Golgher created an Anti-Integralist Committee. A 
group of Brazilian intellectuals, supported by the ica and by 
the Klabin company, published a book in defense of the Jews 
called Por que ser anti-semita? y an inquiry among Brazilian 
intellectuals, in 1933. 

Postwar Period 

After the end of World War 11 and with the participation of 
Brazil in the military campaign